Rolling Afro-Latin Music 2019: Reggaeton, Salsa, Bomba, Latin Jazz, Bachata, Merengue, and more

X-post- I never listened to the prior Latin Jazz show on that station that was there for 20 some years I read. Was it good? Will Sanabria be better?

Dyl— read that article & I didn’t understand how those radio placement rules work. Thanks for confirming what I thought

I listened to the prior incarnation and it was fine although I didn't often feel compelled to listen. The new host may play a wider variety of music, although he sometimes has a certain kind of overbearing NYC personality.

That annual NY Times magazine music Issue edited by Nabisco once again largely ignored most of the world . Just 1 Spanish language tune of the 25 highlighted songs “that matter right now”. From Rosalia of Spain.

http://remezcla.com/features/music/rauw-alejandro-profile-urbano/

Puerto Rican “urbano “ vocalist ( his dad played guitar & sang) Rauw Alejandro

Listening to Cuban group Cimafunk —Cuban afrofunk meets Prince

Also, not a Fan of Juanes, he’s ok, but really like track I heard on radio “La Plata” featuring Lalo Ebratt. More pop less bombastic

I missed Eddie Palmieri ‘s most recent multiple nights at little Blues Alley in DC. Didn’t see reviews or check Instagram to see if anyone snuck a video

Cimafunk are fun! Playing National Sawdust in NYC in April I think.

They’re in DC at Tropicalia tonight . The $25 in advance tix are gone and they want $40 at the door. Don’t know promoter. I think I am gonna skip it.

Other stuff I am listening to: salsa act Michael Stuart has a track on the Billboard hot tropical list . It has a syrupy pop chorus but a straight up banging rhythmic salsa feel under the verses

So Madonna’s been apparently living in Lisbon, Portugal, and her new album has collaborations with Maluma from Colombia and with Anitta from Brazil

On the Madonna thread they’re grumbling that she’s mostly working with Mirwais again.

https://noisey.vice.com/en_us/article/wjv8p4/why-every-popular-rap-song-gets-a-latin-trap-remix

Writer Gary Suarez

I had been waiting for Lalo Ebratt and producer Trapical to recreate some of that “Mocca” magic. This is very much it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2W6dG_B6zs

Lola Indigo ft. Lalo Ebratt • Maldición

(Lola Indigo sure has some good singles!)

Case in point: “El Humo” is Rosalíaggaeton done right, i.e. it’s much better than “Con Altura”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Dlg89bDVLQ

I like this one better, but that's because I'm a big fan of Mala Rodríguez:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-geL8Q3U18

Yep, that one and “Ya No Quiero Nó” are good too.

Had forgotten she’s actually from Spain - but soundwise she’s firmly on the Nuevo Mundo side of things.

http://www.hostos.cuny.edu/Home-Page-Content/News/Hostos-Center-for-the-Arts-Culture-Presents-Thre

May 2 to 4th Machito tribute with concerts and lectures at Hostos Community College in the Bronx

https://www.billboard.com/charts/latin-songs

Con Calma
Daddy Yankee Featuring Snow
Song Lyrics
1
LAST WEEK
1
PEAK POSITION
18
WEEKS ON CHART
GAINS IN PERFORMANCE
2
Bad Bunny Featuring Drake MIA Billboard Hot Latin Songs
MIA
Bad Bunny Featuring Drake
Song Lyrics
2
LAST WEEK
1
PEAK POSITION
34
WEEKS ON CHART
3
Lunay, Daddy Yankee & Bad Bunny Soltera Billboard Hot Latin Songs
Soltera
Lunay, Daddy Yankee & Bad Bunny
3
LAST WEEK
3
PEAK POSITION
12
WEEKS ON CHART
4
Pedro Capo X Farruko Calma Billboard Hot Latin Songs
Calma
Pedro Capo X Farruko
4
LAST WEEK
3
PEAK POSITION
34
WEEKS ON CHART
GAINS IN PERFORMANCE
5
Ozuna x Daddy Yankee x J Balvin x Farruko x Anuel AA Baila Baila Baila Billboard Hot Latin Songs
Baila Baila Baila
Ozuna x Daddy Yankee x J Balvin x Farruko x Anuel AA
6
LAST WEEK
3
PEAK POSITION
21
WEEKS ON CHART
AWARDS
BIGGEST GAIN IN STREAMS
GAINS IN PERFORMANCE
6
DJ Snake Featuring Selena Gomez, Ozuna & Cardi B Taki Taki Billboard Hot Latin Songs
Taki Taki
DJ Snake Featuring Selena Gomez, Ozuna & Ca

In non-chart music, old-school Puerto Rican salsa violinist Alfedo De La Fe (who might have been on Fania) is gonna be down in DC Saturday night at a tiny little club. He and a small band put on a great show when I last saw him (sometime between 2004 and 2008 )

Looks like the current administration is the cause that some Cuban musicians who were scheduled to come to DC have cancelled. The theatre just said due to issues involved with international travel, but you-know who is cracking down on US/Cuba relations again.

Where in DC?

Oh sorry, Habana Village

I didn't make it. Also not seeing that anyone posted video clips on social media. Hopefully he'll be back

xps

This is also in that Latin Songs top ten:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aA_kuFTV-P8

Nicky Jam ft. Ozuna • Te Robaré

Writer Gary Suarez editorial--

Last week, two of music’s biggest names respectively achieved YouTube milestones. The music video for Drake’s 2018 hit single “God’s Plan” officially crossed the one billion plays threshold. So too did Daddy Yankee’s “Con Calma,” his latest hit making big moves on the Billboard charts. ...he accumulated these “Con Calma” views in a quarter of the time it took “God’s Plan” to do, or that he continues to hold the mantle of most played YouTube music video of all time thanks to “Despacito” (6.2 billion). Yankee outperforming Aubrey at the biggest streaming platform in the world alone ought to be newsworthy, to say nothing of the event itself bringing him closer to disrupting Ozuna’s similarly underreported rank as the artist with the most videos in the Billion Views Club – seven in total....

our urban Latin thing remains woefully underrepresented and frequently misrepresented by the American media. Language barriers, inherent historic biases, and a cognitive deficiency of understanding the phenomenon of Spanish-language music have put urbano on mute, at least in the circles and outlets that ought to know better by now. Lumped in with Latin music, a nebulous and laughably broad genre construct, the successes of Bad Bunny, J Balvin, Natti Natasha, and countless others either get ignored or treated as some sort of novelty, the outdated “Latin Explosion” narrative lingering from its pre-millennial milieu.

Among the myths and prejudices keeping reggaeton, trap en español, and urbano-adjacent pop down is the notion that our ongoing accomplishments of late are niche or regional, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary. Such thinking chalks up triumphs like Yankee’s YouTube wins win last week to non-U.S. consumption, absurdly dismissing it as somehow not as valuable as a scenario where the plays were domestic. Putting aside this prejudicially loaded logic that trivializes hitmaking and stardom in Latin America, even a casual glance at the data shows that urbano has a significant domestic presence.

https://remezcla.com/features/music/urbano-breaking-streaming-records/

The above article goes into detail re Billboard calculations also. How streaming is calculated on different platforms

I can't remember if I ever linked this article
which explains a lot about Lincoln Center's complicated relationship with Latin Jazz, which I found by searching Google (Books) with the terms "o'farrill" "barretto" "washburne" "not jazz"

that's a good remenzcla feature. another striking feature of this urbano-driven wave of 'latin' music in the american mainstream is that most formats of radio will not bother whatsoever with these songs, no matter how active they are on streaming services domestically, unless they have some english-language section or are remixed to include such a section, preferably with an established anglophone star.

this remains the case even if the 'spanglish' version performs poorly on the streaming services, as with the remix to "con calma" with katy perry. that song was already doing great on the charts based largely on its streaming activity well before that remix dropped, and while the extra airplay from the remix has since taken it to new heights (tho it's cresting now), its streaming activity is still centered overwhelmingly on the original version without perry's contribution. (billboard decided to add perry's name to its charting credit even when her version's airplay at pop radio was so negligible that the song was undoubtedly receiving still receiving more play at spanish stations.)

perry has been struggling for what seems like years to regain her once-guaranteed foothold on the airwaves. that this big latin hit was sitting on the sidelines and being ignored by mainstream radio despite its proven appeal made it pretty much a no-brainer for her to jump on, even despite her complete lack of demonstrated interest in or connection to latin music or culture. and it looks like it'll pay off -- her recently-launched solo single is doing much better than anything she's tried for ages, and will almost certainly at least be a solid hit on adult pop stations. (and yeah, it helps that it's fairly good.)

not that any of this is surprising. but it's still quite obvious that in this era, mainstream radio has zero interest in latin music, even bona fide smashes, unless it's going to benefit one of their already-established anglophone stars, who are assumed to be the ones who'll be sticking around at their formats. latin music and its stars are then still treated as passing fads, and the possibility that they will only continue to grow in influence from here seems to have barely occurred to these segments of the media.

i sometimes have to remind myself that from the 50s through the 70s, it was not that bizarre for a hit song to come around every so often that was not in english at all! short of "gangnam style", this basically never happens anymore.

anyway, personally i hope that the next latin song to go this distance will be better than "con calma", which i don't particularly like either in its original or katy perry-assisted versions

Can anyone tell me about the Latin pop group Reik? Looks like they’ve maybe been around for a bit

mainstream radio has zero interest in latin music, even bona fide smashes, unless it's going to benefit one of their already-established anglophone stars, who are assumed to be the ones who'll be sticking around at their formats. latin music and its stars are then still treated as passing fads, and the possibility that they will only continue to grow in influence from here seems to have barely occurred to these segments of the media.

Gary's point about streams not being counted equally is the big takeaway from that article. What I'd like to know, and which would go more toward your point, is how many listeners the big Spanish-language radio stations in the US have vs. their pop radio counterparts - like, how many people are listening to (in the NY market) Z100 and how many people are listening to La Mega? Because if these artists are getting billions of YouTube streams, and millions of Spotify and other streams, and significant radio airplay on Latin stations, what do they need recognition from the "mainstream" for anyway? There's no such thing as the "mainstream" anyhow. It's niche vs. niche, so when (for example) the producers of the Fast & Furious movies cast Don Omar and Tego Calderón as comic sidekicks, it wasn't outreach so much as recognizing that those two were already stars in an audience segment that was also watching F&F movies. So let white radio ignore Spanish-language music. The audience will find it - indeed, the audience already knows where to look for it.

Not everything is for everyone.

i mean, sure. but the thing is that white radio, and the segments of the industry that feed it, are not entirely ignoring latin hits -- some, like "mi gente" or most obviously "despacito", simply get too big to ignore, at which point they'll bite. but so far an established anglophone star, even one who is struggling in her supposed main genre, has to come along for the ride.

it's not 100% a bad thing! from an artistic standpoint, i actually admire the romeo santos approach to crossover -- bring in some 'mainstream' guests occasionally, but otherwise let that audience find you, come to you and accept what you're bringing as it already is -- compared to, like, prince royce's attempt to break top 40 airwaves with a lousy rehash of a 112 song from the turn of the century.

i would agree that today especially the landscape is very niche vs. niche. on some level it's always been like that, but with a lot of music sort of filling in the blurrier boundaries. today the boundaries are starker, and where overlap has strengthened it's tended to be along racial lines: rhythmic and urban stations on one side; top 40, adult and alternative stations on the other. where crossover opportunities exist, fewer seem to want to take them (cf that cumulus exec quoted in another thread saying that urban music not crossing over is seen as helping urban stations nowadays), and when they do go for it, it's hard to go the full distance.

the pendulum is swinging, i think, but many top 40 stations are still devoting significant blocks of their playlists to songs that don't sell, don't stream, and don't test well just because they 'sound' (and look) like 'pop'. (ironically, for reasons related to the nature of promotion and audience research, a lot of these songs end up taking up space for an unusually long time before the gatekeepers finally give up on them.)

like, if so many stations are struggling to stack their (lately, small!) playlists with actual new hits instead of just rotating the same holdovers from several months prior every rush hour, maybe they should try playing a little more latin music!

idk. maybe i'm naive or just have rose-colored glasses on, but sometimes i miss times when i could turn the radio on and the various niches played with each other just enough that i could at least believe in the illusion that we all live in the same world.

idk. maybe i'm naive or just have rose-colored glasses on, but sometimes i miss times when i could turn the radio on and the various niches played with each other just enough that i could at least believe in the illusion that we all live in the same world.

Yeah, I pretty much stopped listening to the radio when I was about 14, except for the metal station that I left on when I worked in a big empty warehouse, and occasionally a classical station in the car. It's not the way I choose to consume music at all, and I don't understand why people cling to it — it seems to me like the equivalent of still making phone calls on a land line, or something.

pretty fair/smart!

like, how many people are listening to (in the NY market) Z100 and how many people are listening to La Mega?

btw i was actually curious about this and decided to look some publicly available numbers up and do at least a very approximate back-of-napkin calculation. i couldn't find numbers for la mega in new york, so looking instead at los angeles, the audience of its big pop station (kiis) is probably between 2 and 3 times as large as that of its contemporary latin station kxol. the latin station's audience is probably similar to those of other stations in the area with alternative (kroq), rhythmic (kpwr), country (kkgo), and urban contemporary (krrl) formats.

of course los angeles is not representative of the whole country and interest in latin music is going to vary regionally. interestingly, nationwide one of the most listened-to formats is regional mexican, with an audience share of about 5% (compared to 10% for pop, 8.5% for country, and 8% for adult contemporary). but the styles played at that format (banda, etc.) read as old-fashioned and would never fly at mainstream top 40, in the same way that christian and country radio hits seldom do.

Separate worlds largely here in the DC area. Latinx music from any genre gets very little English language press/website coverage from those who cover English language music

New J. Balvin w/ Bad Buny album didn't wow me on first listen. I like J. Balvin's pop side and that seemed less noticeable at first here

This one though:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcwEyLhwL54

J Balvin x Bad Bunny ft. Mr Eazi • Como Un Bebé

That sounds good. I need to listen to the whole album again too.

https://remezcla.com/lists/music/puerto-rico-protest-music-essential-against-corruption/

Puerto Rican protest songs in various genres from Bad Bunny, Residente, ILe, Ricky Martin, La India, PJ Sin Suela

“All day, the drums and the chants had blared through the streets outside La Fortaleza, the governor’s residence in San Juan, the Puerto Rican capital.

But just before midnight on Wednesday, a silence fell over the crowd.”...

Some loud cursing, as he spoke at length about his accomplishments as governor.

Then, the sound of exultation pierced through the crowd: “RENUNCIÓ!”

A flurry of Puerto Rican flags flew into the air, strangers clasped arms and friends began jumping in circles, singing “¡Oé! ¡Oé! ¡Oé!” Cars from all over the city began to honk and, as people danced, fireworks erupted overhead....Throughout the night, the celebrations took on the feel of a music festival in parts of the old city, as some motorists blasted music from their car stereos. Some street corners resembled spontaneous dance parties as protesters celebrated the shift in Puerto Rico’s politics...But what would happen in the coming days remained unclear. Mr. Rosselló said his resignation would not take effect until Aug. 2, and many have already said his possible successor, Wanda Vázquez, is not a suitable replacement.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/us/san-juan-celebration.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/08/01/how-music-took-down-puerto-ricos-governor/

After Roselló’s resignation, people on social media said: “El Perreo ganó” (perreo won) and “Sin Perreo No Hay Revolución” (There’s no Revolution Without Perreo), pointing to reggaetón’s dance as the knockout blow to the corrupt governor.

Yes, some of these comments were tongue-in-cheek, playing on the irony of music that arose from black and low-income communities unseating the highest elected official in Puerto Rico. But they were also tapping into the longer history of reggaeton and perreo, forms that have always been political. Through reggaeton, Puerto Ricans have expressed political critique, resisted state censorship and criminalization, defied racism and misogyny — and now fueled collective action...

Prominent reggaeton and trap artists frequently joined demonstrators in the streets during the protests. Residente, iLe and Bad Bunny, in particular, alongside pop star Ricky Martin, played a vital role in amplifying the call of the Colectiva Feminista en Construcción for the National Strike on July 18, one of the largest demonstrations to take place in Puerto Rico’s history. In addition to the presence of artists at the protests, people also used reggaeton lyrics as chants. For instance, demonstrators frequently used a popular line from “En la Cama,” Daddy Yankee’s 2001 hit featuring Nicky Jam to call for Rosselló’s resignation. When a protester shouted “Yo quiero la combi completa” (I want the whole combination), which in the original makes reference to the various parts of a woman’s body, the crowd chanted in response “Qué? Ricky renuncia, puñeta!” (What? Ricky, resign, damnit!).

La Colectiva Feminista en Construcción, the feminist collective that initiated the protests in La Fortaleza, organize a yearly celebration “Si no puedo perrear, no es mi revolución” (If I can’t dance reggaeton, it’s not my revolution).

Te Bote-- I dumped you, threw you out of my life --Te Boté Remix - Casper Nio García Darell Nicky Jam Bad Bunny Ozuna

This song got a new meaning with the protests against the now former governor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymBTbyQXE2c

Billboard Hot Latin Tracks

Otro Trago
Sech Featuring Darell

Songwriter(s):
C.I.Morales Williams, O.E.Castro Hernandez, J.Vasquez Valdes, J.J.Mendez
Producer(s):
Dimelo Flow
Imprint/Promotion Label:
Rich
2
Anuel AA, Daddy Yankee, Karol G, Ozuna & J Balvin
Songwriter(s):
E.Gazmey Santiago, J.C.Ozuna Rosado, V.Saavedra, Karol G, R.L.ayala Rodriguez, J.A.Osorio Balvin, M.E.Masis Fernandez
Producer(s):
Tainy
Imprint/Promotion Label:
Real Hasta La Muerte

3
Daddy Yankee & Katy Perry Featuring Snow Con Calma
Con Calma

Songwriter(s):
R.L.ayala Rodriguez, J.G.Rivera Vazquez, D.K.O'Brien
Producer(s):
Play-N-Skillz, Scott Summers
Imprint/Promotion Label:
UMLE | El Cartel
4
Bad Bunny & Tainy Callaita
Callaita

Songwriter(s):
B.A.Martinez Ocasio, F.G.Ortiz Torres
Producer(s):
Tainy, F.Saldana, Tunes
Imprint/Promotion Label:
Rimas
5
Lunay, Daddy Yankee & Bad Bunny Soltera

Songwriter(s):
J.Osorio Moreno, R.L.ayala Rodriguez, B.A.Martinez Ocasio, J.G.Rivera Vazquez, C.E.Ortiz Rivera, L.C.E.Ortiz Rivera, N.K.Segarra, J.Echevarria, N.K.Assad
Producer(s):
Chris Jeday, Gaby Music, N.K.Segarra, Dulce Como Candy
Imprint/Promotion Label:
Star Island

6
Jhay Cortez, J Balvin & Bad Bunny No Me Conoce

enjoying this second iLe album, almadura:

https://www.kexp.org/read/2019/6/27/calle-13-ile-hurricane-maria-solo-album-almadura/

it seems so lucid

I need to listen to it more. Checked it out quickly at first

Several Latinx music critics on twitter are grumbling that Otro Trago
Sech Featuring Darell

Is not getting the crossover media attention it and he deserves despite being number #1 for awhile , but European Rosalia can just say hello and get lotsa love and attention as an artiste

Sech is Afro-Panamanian

it's that pitchfork magic

still got it!!!!!

It’s a banger alright. I’m especially fond of the remix:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaCnp-yB-Yc
Sech ft. Darell, Nicky Jam, Ozuna & Anuel AA • Otro Trago (Remix)

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/27/arts/music/dembow-rhythm-drake-justin-bieber.html

Dembow rhythm history w/ a Spotify playlist

X-post — Yeah that Otro Trago Remix is nice

that's quite nice

Since we can never read enough discussion of Rosalia versus Latinx artists, here’s J Shepherd from the Slate music crit roundtable :

This is not to say that “authenticity” is the goal or even all that desirable as a flat concept, but when Rosalía is better known by mainstream English publications than Anitta or Natti Natasha or Amara La Negra or Karol G or even Becky G, the system has either gone wonky or is doing exactly what it was meant to.

https://slate.com/culture/2019/12/best-music-2019-fka-twigs-solange-holly-herndon.html

I might grant more weight to her statement if Googling her name paired with any of those artists' names yielded results. You can't complain that no one's writing about these artists if you're not writing about them either.

(She's an editor at Jezebel. If she wanted to get something out there, she could. The last time she wrote about Amara La Negra was in 2015.)

As editor, maybe she assigned someone else to write about them.

I wrote up a Karol G preview in 2017 for the Washington DC City Paper, and did Bad Bunny, J Balvin, & Maluma this year. There’s not too much English language coverage of Latinx music in DC area

https://remezcla.com/lists/music/10-best-latino-latin-american-spanish-albums-of-year-2019/

Less "urbano" than I expected, but still strongly represented. 1.'This Is How You Smile' by Helado Negro;2. 'Oasis' by Bad Bunny & J Balvin; 3. 'Ahomale' by Combo Chimbita; 4.'Almadura' by iLe;5.'Sueños' by Sech; 6.'Foam' by Divino Niño; 7. 'Soy Piedra' by Belafonte Sensacional;8.'Sombrou Dúvida' by Boogarins; 9.'System' by Debit ; 10-Joterías Bobas’ by Hidrogenesse

Not really seeing many Latin jazz albums on lists. The genre seemed formulaic years ago, but still hangs on. Pancho Sanchez did a Coltrane tribute I see. The NPR jazz critics poll usually has a separate Latin jazz category, but the 2019 poll is not posted yet.

Time to go to the 2020 thread:

Rolling Afro-Latin Music 2020: Reggaeton, Salsa, Bomba, Latin Jazz, Bachata, Merengue, Urbano and more Latinx