Author : Petra R. Rivera-Rideau
Publisher : Duke University Press
ISBN 13 : 0822375257
Total Pages : 246 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (223 download)
Book Synopsis Remixing Reggaetón by : Petra R. Rivera-Rideau
Download or read book Remixing Reggaetón written by Petra R. Rivera-Rideau and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2015-09-17 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Puerto Rico is often depicted as a "racial democracy" in which a history of race mixture has produced a racially harmonious society. In Remixing Reggaetón, Petra R. Rivera-Rideau shows how reggaetón musicians critique racial democracy's privileging of whiteness and concealment of racism by expressing identities that center blackness and African diasporic belonging. Stars such as Tego Calderón criticize the Puerto Rican mainstream's tendency to praise black culture but neglecting and marginalizing the island's black population, while Ivy Queen, the genre's most visible woman, disrupts the associations between whiteness and respectability that support official discourses of racial democracy. From censorship campaigns on the island that sought to devalue reggaetón, to its subsequent mass marketing to U.S. Latino listeners, Rivera-Rideau traces reggaetón's origins and its transformation from the music of San Juan's slums into a global pop phenomenon. Reggaetón, she demonstrates, provides a language to speak about the black presence in Puerto Rico and a way to build links between the island and the African diaspora.