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WORK TITLE: Remixing Reggaeton
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BIRTHDATE: 1980
WEBSITE: http://petrariverarideau.weebly.com/
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http://www.wellesley.edu/americanstudies/facstaff/rivera-rideau#ffYhkPKJrwVFsSZi.97 * http://www.wellesley.edu/sites/default/files/riverarideaucv.pdf
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PERSONAL
Born 1980, in Lorain, Ohio.
EDUCATION:Universidad de la Habana, Havana, Cuba, semester abroad, 2001; Harvard University, Certificate in Latin American Studies, 2003, B.A. (African American studies), 2006; University of California, Berkeley, M.A., 2006, Ph.D., 2010.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Social worker in the Latino community, Bronx, NY; University of Richmond, Richmond, VA, postdoctoral fellow in Latin American and Iberian studies, 2010; Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, assistant professor of Africana Studies, 2012-16; Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA, assistant professor of American Studies, 2016—.
AWARDS:Cornel West Prize in African American Studies, Harvard University, 2003; Exemplary Diversity Dissertation Award, National Council for Institutional Diversity, University of Michigan, 2010. Recipient of various fellowships and research grants.
WRITINGS
Contributor to books and encyclopedias, including Seismographic Sounds – Visions of a New World, edited by Theresa Beyer, Thomas Burkhalter, and Hannes Liechti, Norient Network for Local and Global Sounds and Media Culture (Bern, Switzerland), 2015; Dictionary of Caribbean and Afro-Latin American Biography, edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Franklin Knight, Oxford University Press, 2016; and Oxford Bibliographies in African American Studies, edited by Gene Jarrett, Oxford University Press, 2016.
Contributor of articles to journals, including the Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, Latino Studies, Popular Music and Society, Transitions, and Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power.
SIDELIGHTS
Petra R. Rivera-Rideau is teacher and scholar who researches and writes about African American issues, the African diaspora, Latin American issues, racial formation in the Americas, and popular culture. She holds degrees from Harvard University and the University of California, Berkeley, and performed postdoctoral research at the University of Richmond. She is an assistant professor of American studies at Wellesley College, and before that was an assistant professor of Africana Studies at Virginia Tech. Rivera-Rideau was born in Lorain, Ohio; her grandfather was one of the first Puerto Ricans to work at the National Tube Company in Lorain in the 1940s. Her father, Eugene Rivera, Jr., wrote a chapter about the history of Puerto Ricans in Lorain in the 2005 book, The Puerto Rican Diaspora.
In 2015, Rivera-Rideau published Remixing Reggaetón: The Cultural Politics of Blackness in Puerto Rico. In this book, she sheds light on how Puerto Rico is not necessarily a racial democracy and harmonious society of people from different races. In particular, she focuses on the music and politics of reggaetón musicians, who have critiqued the Puerto Rican mainstream’s privileging of whiteness and concealment of racism and have instead given voice to identities that center around blackness and African diasporic belonging. Rivera-Rideau explores various facets of the Puerto Rican racial divide, including issues of identity, classicism, racism, and social inequity. One of the musicians whom Rivera-Rideau features is Tego Calderón, whose music has revealed the Puerto Rican mainstream’s tendency to praise black culture but neglect and even marginalize the island’s black population. Rivera-Rideau also discusses Ivy Queen, who has used her music to comment on how notions of whiteness and respectability support the island society’s status quo. Other topics that Rivera-Rideau covers include the origins and root styles of reggaetón and its transformation from the music of San Juan’s slums into a global pop phenomenon. She also takes a look at the mass marketing of reggaetón to U.S. Latino listeners, as well as how censorship has tried to devalue reggaetón as an art form.
In an interview with Walter Thompson-Hernández on the Remezcla Web site, Rivera-Rideau commented on two censorship campaigns against reggaetón in Puerto Rico in the mid-1990s and in 2002: “Ultimately, these censorship campaigns wound up giving more publicity to many reggaetón artists, even though in many ways that is what would-be censors were trying to stop. As the music grew more popular, U.S.-based record companies started taking notice and signing distribution deals with existing labels or even creating their own reggaetón divisions.” In a review in Choice, D.V. Moskowitz observed that one of the book’s highlights is when Rivera-Rideau “explores at length the connection between reggaetón, American hip-hop, and Jamaican dance hall.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, June 2016, D.V. Moskowitz, review of Remixing Reggaetón: The Cultural Politics of Race in Puerto Rico, p. 1483.
ONLINE
Petra Rivera-Rideau Home Page, http://petrariverarideau.weebly.com (June 1, 2017).
Remezcla, http://remezcla.com (October 21, 2015), review of Remixing Reggaetón.
Wellesley College, http://www.wellesley.edu/ (June 1, 2017), faculty profile and link to curriculum vitae.
WELCOME! ¡BIENVENIDOS!
I am currently Assistant Professor of American Studies at Wellesley College.
I hold a B.A., magna cum laude with highest honors, in African American Studies and a Certificate in Latin American Studies from Harvard University. I also earned a Ph.D. in African Diaspora Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. My teaching and research center on racial formation in the Americas, diaspora studies, and popular culture.
My first book titled, Remixing Reggaetón: The Cultural Politics of Blackness in Puerto Rico, was published by Duke University Press in 2015.
ABOUT ME
I was born in Ohio and lived in the city of Lorain until my eighth birthday. Located on the shores of Lake Erie, Lorain is a manufacturing community based on the local steel mill. My grandfather was among the first group of Puerto Ricans recruited to work for the National Tube Company in Lorain in the 1940s. My father and grandmother followed shortly thereafter. My father, Eugene Rivera, Jr., has written about the history of Puerto Ricans in Lorain, and published a chapter on the subject in the edited volume, The Puerto Rican Diaspora (Temple University Press, 2005 -- order a copy here!).
After I turned 8, my family moved to Madison, Connecticut, a New England town on the coast of the Long Island Sound. Madison is quite different from Lorain. Moving between the two places taught me about the ways that local communities are shaped by broader political and economic forces. My experiences in both places also introduced me to the ways local circumstances influence how individuals think about race.
After high school, I entered Harvard University where I graduated with a degree in African American Studies and a Certificate in Latin American Studies. I also studied abroad at the University of Havana in the fall of 2001. Upon graduation from college, I worked at a non-profit in New York City providing social services to predominantly Latina/o communities in the Bronx. Then, I moved to Berkeley, California, where I completed my doctorate in African Diaspora Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.
After graduate school, I moved to Richmond, Virginia, where I worked as a postdoctoral fellow in Latin American and Iberian Studies at the University of Richmond. Since 2012, I have lived in Blacksburg, Virginia, and work at Virginia Tech.
Petra R.Rivera-RideauAssistant ProfessorAmerican Studies ProgramWellesley College106 Central StreetWellesley, MA 02481priverar@wellesley.eduEDUCATIONPh.D.University of California, Berkeley, African Diaspora StudiesMay 2010M.A.University of California, Berkeley, African Diaspora StudiesMay 2006B.A.Harvard University, African American Studies magna cum laude with highest honors in field.Certificate in Latin American Studies.May 2003Universidad de la Habana, Havana, Cuba. Semester Study Abroad through Butler UniversityAugust –December 2001POSITIONS HELDAssistant Professor of American StudiesWellesley College2016 -presentAssistant Professor of Africana StudiesVirginia Tech2012 –2016Consortium for Faculty Diversity in Liberal Arts Colleges Postdoctoral FellowshipDepartment of Latin American and Iberian StudiesUniversity of RichmondRichmond, VA2010 –2012PUBLICATIONS BooksRivera-Rideau, Petra R. Remixing Reggaetón: The Cultural Politics of Race in Puerto Rico. Durham: Duke University Press, 2015.Edited VolumesRivera-Rideau, Petra R., Jennifer A. Jones, and Tianna S. Paschel, eds. Afro-Latin@sin Movement: Critical Approaches to Blackness and Transnationalism in the Americas. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.Peer Reviewed Articles
Petra R. Rivera-RideauPage 2of 8Rivera-Rideau, Petra R. “From Carolina to Loíza: Race, Place, and Puerto Rican Racial Democracy.” Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power.20, no. 5 (2013): 616-632.Rivera-Rideau, Petra R. “Cocolos Modernos: Salsa, Reggaetón, and the Cultural Politics of Blackness.” Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies. 8, no. 1 (2013): 1-19.Rivera, Petra R. “‘Tropical Mix’: Afro-Latino Space and Notch’s Reggaetón.” Popular Music and Society. 34, no. 2(2011): 221-235.Book ChaptersRivera-Rideau, Petra R. “Panabay Pride: A Conversation with Los Rakas.” In Afro-Latinos in Movement: Critical Approaches to Blackness and Transnationalism in the Americas. Petra R. Rivera-Rideau, Jennifer A. Jones, and Tianna S. Paschel, eds. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Expected May 2016.Rivera-Rideau, Petra R., Jennifer A. Jones, and Tianna S. Paschel. “Introduction: Theorizing Afrolatinidades.” In Afro-Latinos in Movement: Critical Approaches to Blackness and Transnationalism in the Americas. Petra R. Rivera-Rideau, Jennifer A. Jones, and Tianna S. Paschel, eds. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Expected May 2016.Invited BookReviewsRivera-Rideau, Petra R. Review of Transnational Encounters: Music and Performance on the U.S.-Mexico Border, Alejandro Madrid, ed. Oxford University Press, 2011. the world of music, 4 (2016): 149-151.Rivera-Rideau, Petra R. Review of Reggaeton, Raquel Z. Rivera, Wayne Marshall, and Deborah Pacini Hernández, eds. Duke University Press, 2009. Latino Studies, 11, no. 3 (2013): 450-452.Rivera, Petra R. “Triple Consciousness.” Transitions Magazine, No. 105(2011):156-163. Review of The Afro-Latin@ Reader: History and Culture in the United States, Miriam Jiménez Román and Juan Flores, eds. Duke University Press, 2010.Rivera, Petra R. Review of Puerto Rican Citizen, Lorrin Thomas, University of Chicago Press, 2010. Canadian Journal of LatinAmerican and Caribbean Studies, 36, no. 71 (2011): 283-285.Invited Encyclopedia Entries and Bibliographies (Note: * denotes peer review)Rivera-Rideau, Petra R. “Franco, Edgardo (El General).” Dictionary of Caribbean and Afro-Latin American Biography, eds. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Franklin Knight, Oxford University Press, 2016.
Petra R. Rivera-RideauPage 3of 8*Rivera-Rideau, Petra R. “Afro-Latinos.” In Oxford Bibliographies in African American Studies, Gene Jarrett, ed. Oxford University Press, 2016.Other PublicationsRivera-Rideau, Petra R. “The Power of Pleasure.” In Seismographic Sounds –Visions of a New World, Theresa Beyer, Thomas Burkhalter, and Hannes Liechti, eds. Bern, Switzerland: Norient Network for Local and Global Sounds and Media Culture, 2015.In PressRivera-Rideau, Petra R. “From Panama to the Bay: Los Rakas’ Expressions of Afrolatinidad.” In La Verdad: A Reader of Hip-Hop Latinidades. Melissa Castillo-Garsow and Jason Nichols, eds. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. Expected Fall 2016.Works in Progress“Reggaetón.” Oxford Bibliographies in Latin Studies,Ilan Savans, ed. Invited. Under Review. “‘If I Were You...’: On Diasporic Relation and Afrolatinidad.”Article Manuscript in Progress.ACADEMIC HONORS AND FELLOWSHIPSThe Carter G. Woodson Institute Post-doctoral Residential Research and Teaching Fellowship, University of Virginia (declined)2012Tocqueville Seminars Summer Institute, University of Richmond, Richmond, VA2011Exemplary Diversity Dissertation Award, National Council for Institutional Diversity, University of Michigan2010Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship, Social Science Research Council 2007Puerto Rican Diaspora Research Grant, Center for Puerto Rican Studies (Hunter College)2007Dean’s Normative Time Fellowship, University of California, Berkeley2007Peter Rollins-Michael Shoenecke Conference Travel Grant, Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association2007Tinker Summer Field Research Grant, Center for Latin American Studies, University of California, Berkeley2005Ford Predoctoral Fellowship for Minorities, National Academy of Sciences (3 years)2004 Chancellor’s Opportunity Fellowship, University of California, Berkeley (3 years)2004Cornel West Prize in African American Studies, Harvard University2003
Petra R. Rivera-RideauPage 4of 8SELECT CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS-“If I Were You...”: Tego Calderón’s Diasporic Interventions.” Latina/o Studies Association Conference. Pasadena, CA. July 7, 2016.-“Imagining Loíza: Tego Calderón’s African DiasporicIntervention.” Latin American Studies Association Conference. New York, NY. May 29, 2016.-“From Panama to the Bay: Los Rakas’ Expressions of Afrolatinidad.” Ethnicity, Race, and Indigenous Peoples Conference. Richmond, VA. October 16, 2015.-“From Panama to the Bay: Los Rakas’ Expressions of Afrolatinidad.” International Association for Study of Popular Music, US Branch Conference. Louisville, KY. February 21, 2015.-“The Pleasures and Pains of Love: Listening to La Lupe and Ivy Queen.” American Studies Association Conference. Los Angeles, CA. November 7, 2014.-Roundtable Participant, “Afro-Latinos in Movement: Critical Approaches to Blackness and Transnationalism in the Americas.” Latina/o Studies Conference: Imagining the Past, Present, and Future. Chicago, IL. July 19, 2014.-“More than Acrylics: Race, Fingernails, and the Artificiality of Whiteness in the Self-Stylings of Reggaetonera Ivy Queen.” Gender Bodies and Technology Conference: Performing the Human. Virginia Tech. Blacksburg, VA. May 3, 2014.-“The Possibilities and Limits of Reggaetón as a Cultural Practice of Diaspora.” Remapping the Black Atlantic: Diaspora (Re)Writings of Race and Space, Center for Black Diaspora, DePaul University. Chicago, IL. April 12, 2013.-“Enter the Hurbans: Race, Reggaetón, and Latino Identities.” International Association for the Study of Popular Music –U.S. Branch Conference. Austin, TX. March 1, 2013.-Roundtable participant, “Puerto Rican Popular Music in Lorain, Ohio.”American Studies Association Conference. San Juan, Puerto Rico. November 18, 2012-“Fingernails con Feeling: Love, Vengeance, and Race in Ivy Queen’s Reggaetón.” Latin American Studies Association Conference. San Francisco, CA. May 26, 2012. -“Black Boricua: Ambivalence, Place, and Blackness in Tego Calderón’s Reggaetón.” Puerto Rican Studies Association Conference. Hartford, CT. October 23, 2010. -“Creating a Diaspora Space: Underground, Housing Projects, and Racial Democracy in Puerto Rico.” Paper presented at Latin American Studies Association Conference, Toronto, Canada. October 8, 2010.-Roundtable Participant, “Historical and Theoretical Dimensions of Afro-Latino Identity.” Radical Philosophy Association Conference, San Francisco State University. November 8, 2008.
Petra R. Rivera-RideauPage 5of 8-“‘Soca, Reggae, Reggaetón, Tropical Mix’: Afro-Latino Spaces and Notch’s Reggaetón.” Race, and Indigenous Peoples (ERIP) section of Latin American Studies Association Conference. University of California, San Diego. May 23, 2008.SELECT INVITEDPRESENTATIONS-“From Proposal to Published: The Behind the Scenes Story of Remixing Reggaetón.” Faculty Development Workshop. University of Richmond. Richmond, VA.-“Afro-Latinidad: Racial Identities in the Americas.” Mary Baldwin College. Staunton, VA. October 16, 2014.-“Of Roots and Routes: Race, Nation, and Diaspora in Puerto Rican Reggaetón.” Race and Society in the Atlantic World. Alexandrian Society Symposium, Virginia Commonwealth University. Richmond, VA. April 23, 2014.-“What About the Afro-Latinos?” Hispanic Heritage Month Keynote. Salem VA Medical Center. Salem, VA. September 26, 2013.-“Reggaetón Music, Race, and National Identity in Puerto Rico.” CubaCaribe Festival/Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco, CA. April 15, 2010.-“Representations of Blackness in Puerto Rico’s Institute of Puerto Rican Culture.” “Displaying Diaspora” Symposium, Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco, CA. October 23, 2009.MEDIA INTERVIEWS-“Sexism in Reggaeton: Our Love/Hate Relationship with Our Most Popular Music,” Amaris Castillo, Vivala.com. June 3, 2016. [http://www.vivala.com/womens-issues/reggaeton-sexism-women/4905]-“The Unstoppable Rise of Reggaetón,” Gabriela Resto-Montero, Fusion. January 25, 2016. [http://fusion.net/story/258034/reggaeton-spotify-global/]-“More Than Just Party Music: New Book ‘Remixing Reggaetón’ Mines the Complicated Racial Politics of the Genre.” Interview with Remezclaby Walter Thompson-Hernández. October 21, 2015. [http://remezcla.com/features/new-book-remixing-reggaeton-racial-politics/]-“History of Reggaetón.” Interview for La Raza Chronicles radio program at KPFA (FM 94.1). Berkeley, CA. February 24, 2010.
Petra R. Rivera-RideauPage 6of 8TEACHING Wellesley CollegeLatinas/os in the USAfro-Latinas/osin the USVirginia TechIntroduction to African American Studies (Online and Lecture)Theorizing Beyoncé: Race, Gender, and Popular Culture in the United StatesAfro-Latinos in the United StatesTheories of the African Diaspora (Graduate Seminar)University of RichmondAfro-Latina/o Identities in the U.S. Developed with support of Pedagogical Grant for Tocqueville Seminars for Transnational American Studies. Latina/o Popular Music and Migration in the U.S.U.S. Latina/o Literature.The African Diaspora in Latin America.University of California, BerkeleyAfro-Latinos in the Spanish Caribbean(Intensive Writing Seminar)Graduate AdvisingAlicia Díaz, MFA, The George Washington University, Committee Member (completed)Teaching AwardsFavoriteFaculty Award, Housing and Residence Life/Division of Student Affairs, Virginia Tech, 2013.Teaching Interests:African Diaspora Studies; Latin American and Caribbean Studies;Latina/o Studies; Race & Ethnicity; Popular Culture; Interdisciplinary Methodologies
Petra R. Rivera-RideauPage 7of 8PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES AND SERVICEJournal RefereeOccasional Manuscript Reviewer: Latino Studies, CENTRO Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies, Black Music Research Journal,Journal for Popular Music Studies, Social CurrentsGrant ReviewerSocial Science Research Council Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship, 2015.Scholar on RecordScholar on Record for Latino Americans: 500 Years of History, Virginia Tech Libraries, PI Monena HallConferences and Speaker Series Panel Organizer, “Race, Knowledge Production, and Spaces of Belonging in Puerto Rico.” Latina/o Studies Association Conference. Pasadena, CA. July 7, 2016.Conference Co-Organizer (with Jennifer A. Jones (Notre Dame) and Tianna Paschel (University of Chicago). “Afro-Latinos in Movement: Critical Approaches to Blackness and Transnationalism in the Americas.” University of Notre Dame. Notre Dame, IN. October 31, 2014. Roundtable Organizer & Chair, “Afro-Latinos in Movement: Critical Approaches to Blackness and Transnationalism in the Americas.” Latina/o Studies Conference: Imagining the Past, Present, and Future. Chicago, IL. July 17-19, 2014.Panel Organizer, “Myth-Making, Modernity, and Representation in the Black Atlantic.” Remapping the Black Atlantic: Diaspora (Re)Writings of Race and Space Conference, Center for Black Diaspora, DePaul University. Chicago, IL. April 12-14, 2013.Roundtable Organizer and Chair, “Puerto Rican Popular Music in Lorain, Ohio,” American Studies Association, San Juan, Puerto Rico, November 2012.Afro-Latina/o Hip Hop Speaker Series Co-Organizer with Patricia Herrera (Featuring Ariel Fernández Díaz and Raquel Z. Rivera), University of Richmond, February-March 2012.Program Committee Member, Caribbean Studies Association Annual Conference, 2007Conference Co-Organizer, Afro-Latino Working Group, University of California, Berkeley, 2007
Petra R. Rivera-RideauPage 8of 8PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPSAmerican Studies AssociationLatina/o Studies AssociationLatin American Studies AssociationInternational Association for the Study of Popular Music –U.S. BranchLANGUAGESSpanish (Fluent)Portuguese (Reading Knowledge)
Petra R. Rivera-Rideau
Assistant Professor of American Studies
Interdisciplinary scholar studying race and ethnic identities and popular culture in Latin America and U.S. Latina/o communities.
Broadly, my research examines the cultural politics of race in Latin American and Latina/o communities. I am primarily interested in how ideas about blackness and Latinidad intersect (or not) in popular culture, especially popular music. My first book, Remixing Reggaeton: The Cultural Politics of Race in Puerto Rico, focused on how the rap-reggae musical hybrid reggaeton offers new ways of thinking about Puerto Rico's relationship to the broader African diaspora. I argue that reggaeton's black diasporic politics disrupt dominant narratives of Puerto Ricanness that stress the island's ties to Spain. I have also published articles about reggaeton in journals such as Popular Music & Society, Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, and Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power.
I also co-edited Afro-Latin@s in Movement: Critical Approaches to Blackness and Transnationalism in the Americas with Jennifer A. Jones and Tianna S. Paschel. This interdisciplinary volume combines academic analysis, personal reflections, interviews, and photography to examine how different ideas about blackness travel across Latin America, the Spanish Caribbean, and the United States.
In addition to my work on reggaeton and Afro-Latino identities, I am beginning a new project about representations of Latinidad in the Zumba® fitness program, tentatively titled "Fun, Fitness, Fiesta: Zumba® and the Production of Latinidad." I am also interested in musical production in Puerto Rican diasporic communities outside of New York City.
Generally my courses consider the histories, cultures, and representations of Latina/o communities from a transnational perspective. At Wellesley, I teach courses about Afro-Latina/o identities, Latin popular music, race and culture in Puerto Rico, among others.
When I'm not at work, I enjoy spending time with my family, reading fiction, going to the beach, and cooking new foods.
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Read more at http://www.wellesley.edu/americanstudies/facstaff/rivera-rideau#wMhVgzzH3UotFLds.99
Rivera-Rideau, Petra R.: Remixing reggaeton: the cultural politics of race in Puerto Rico
D.V. Moskowitz
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries. 53.10 (June 2016): p1483.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
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Rivera-Rideau, Petra R. Remixing reggaeton: the cultural politics of race in Puerto Rico. Duke, 2015. 224p bibl index afp ISBN 9780822359456 cloth, $84.95; ISBN 9780822359647 pbk, $23.95; ISBN 9780822375258 ebook, contact publisher for price
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Rivera-Rideau (Africana studies, Virginia Tech) navigates the intersection of race, class, and cross-cultural musical legitimacy in Puerto Rican reggaeton. The book's five chapters chart the evolution of the style from its roots, through a period of censorship, to the contributions of specific reggaeton artists. Beyond addressing reggaeton's ability to impact decades of classicism, racism, and social inequity, Rivera-Rideau grapples with the issues of Puerto Rican identity and race, illuminating issues of blackness and Caribbean identity. She achieves this by tracing the roots of the style and recognizing its current stars and the music they perform. Of particular note, Rivera-Rideau explores at length the connection between reggaeton, American hip-hop, and Jamaican dance hall, paying particular attention to disenfranchised members of the African diaspora suffering racial exclusion. The last chapter tackles the topic of race once reggaeton migrated to the US recording market, where the struggle was for its identity as a black or Hispanic cultural product. Summing Up: ** Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers.--D. V. Moskowitz, University of South Dakota
More Than Just Party Music: New Book ‘Remixing Reggaetón’ Mines the Complicated Racial Politics of the Genre
By Walter Thompson-Hernández | 2 years ago
For centuries, the complexities of racism in Latin America have been overshadowed by the false perception that high rates of racial mixture have created a racially democratic Latin American society. In her new book, Remixing Reggaetón: The Cultural Politics of Race in Puerto Rico, scholar Petra Rivera-Rideau challenges this idea through the prism of a genre of urban music that gained momentum in impoverished neighborhoods on the island and ultimately became a global pop phenomenon.
Positing that reggaetón challenges the racial democracy myth, Remixing Reggaetón focuses on leading Puerto Rican artists like Tego Calderon and Ivy Queen, who are shifting traditional views on gender, sexuality, and race through provocative, unapologetic performances. Using a historical and contemporary analysis, Rivera-Rideau situates the music against the backdrop of Puerto Rico’s legacy of anti-black racism, looking at how reggaetón both jump-starts the party and raises critical awareness.
We caught up with Rivera-Rideau to learn more about the motivations for her project, and how a sound popping off in the club is providing us with a language to talk about Afro-Latinidad.
What led you to this project?
I have always been interested in racial justice and popular music, an interest that developed in part from my father’s influence. My father has done a lot of community organizing and social justice work with Puerto Rican communities in Ohio and Connecticut, and he also has an incredible music collection, especially salsa. So he really instilled in me both this love of music and this desire to work on social justice issues.
Few academics in the U.S. pay attention to reggaetón despite its tremendous popularity all over the world.
As an undergraduate, I learned a lot about Latino-African American relations in the U.S., but I grew more interested in the experiences of Afro-Latin Americans, especially in Puerto Rico, where my father is from. I also was interested in the project because not a lot of academics in the U.S. pay attention to reggaetón despite its tremendous popularity all over the world. I felt like we were missing out on a huge phenomenon that speaks to a variety of social issues and has meaning for many Latino youth.
Can you briefly describe the trajectory of reggaetón and its progression from the barrios of San Juan to a world phenomenon?
Reggaetón is really interesting partly because of the question of origins. I focus the book on Puerto Rico for a couple of reasons – partially, my personal connection to the island, but also because I think that what people now think of as reggaetón is really grounded in an urban Puerto Rican experience. That said, many people would argue that reggaetón started as reggae en español in Panama, not in Puerto Rico.
On the other hand, a lot of people think reggaetón started in 2004 when Daddy Yankee released “Gasolina,” but the music has a long history in Puerto Rico that stretches back into the 1980s when it was called “underground.” Daddy Yankee himself started his career long before “Gasolina” came out. So reggaetón initially had circulated on the island informally on mixtapes and at parties and things like that. Eventually, some local record labels came out and the music became more visible on the island.
In the book, I talk about two censorship campaigns in Puerto Rico that came about each time the music grew popular – one in the mid-1990s and then another in 2002. Ultimately, these censorship campaigns wound up giving more publicity to many reggaetón artists, even though in many ways that is what would-be censors were trying to stop. As the music grew more popular, U.S.-based record companies started taking notice and signing distribution deals with existing labels or even creating their own reggaetón divisions. Reggaetón artists then could be propelled to the international stage in new kinds of ways with the backing of major record industry players.
Reggaetón provokes such extreme responses. There are whole sites dedicated to hating it.
What are the social and racial implications of reggaetón?
One of the things that makes reggaetón interesting to me is how it provokes such extreme responses. There are whole internet sites, for example, dedicated to hating reggaetón. But beyond that, I think that, at least in Puerto Rico, part of the attention reggaetón has received from legislators and policy makers is not really about the music itself as much as it is about underlying anxieties about race, especially blackness, and class issues. This is really at the heart of what I’m trying to do with this book. Reggaetón is, of course, party music. But it also brought to the fore issues like racial discrimination and problems facing poor urban communities on the island in ways that really challenged a lot of the dominant narratives about national belonging and what being Puerto Rican means.
Gifted Puerto Rican rapper Tego Calderon is seen outside his studio, El Sitio, in Santurce, San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Gifted Puerto Rican rapper Tego Calderon is seen outside his studio, El Sitio, in Santurce, San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Also, as several other scholars have noted, reggaetón highlights the island’s connections with the broader African diaspora as well as the Puerto Rican diaspora in the United States, especially New York. And in the book I talk about how this really challenges a lot of problematic assumptions about Nuyoricans as “inauthentic” Puerto Ricans, or the idea that all Puerto Ricans want to distance themselves from blackness. This is not to say that reggaetón doesn’t have issues – certainly we could talk about the often problematic gender politics in the genre, for example. But I think that, like most forms of popular music, reggaetón is really complicated and contradictory. And so in the book I really stress how reggaetón serves as a space to complicate many of the normative and dominant ways that blackness has been understood in Puerto Rico.
[The music] challenges a lot of problematic assumptions about Nuyoricans as “inauthentic” Puerto Ricans.
Can you briefly describe the idea of a “racial democracy” and how this plays out in the context of reggaetón in Puerto Rico?
Racial democracy is really an idea that comes out of Brazil, but I use it in the book both because I think Puerto Rico and Brazil are pretty similar in terms of racial ideology, but also because I see more and more scholars of race in Puerto Rico using this term. To boil it down, basically, racial democracy refers to the idea that a population is all racially mixed and lives in racial harmony, and therefore racism does not exist. In Puerto Rico, we see a common narrative often referred to as “la gran familia puertorriqueña” that represents Puerto Ricans as the descendants of Spanish, African, and indigenous Taíno ancestors.
As a result, Puerto Rico is seen as a racially harmonious society in which everyone is treated equally and there are no problems. But a lot of research shows that this is not actually the case – racial disparities do exist in Puerto Rico. So racial democracy really represents a fundamental contradiction on the island because, rhetorically, it promotes racial harmony while hiding the reality of racism on the ground. I think its worth pointing out that this is not super unique to Puerto Rico – we see similar ideas and contradictions in much of Latin America, although these ideologies may have different names depending on whether you are in Brazil or Mexico or Colombia or wherever.
Ivy Queen of Puerto Rico poses after winning Album of the Year in the Urban Genre at the Premio Lo Nuestro Latin Music Awards in Miami Thursday, Feb.21, 2008. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)
Ivy Queen of Puerto Rico poses after winning Album of the Year in the Urban Genre at the Premio Lo Nuestro Latin Music Awards in Miami Thursday, Feb.21, 2008. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)
I think reggaetón makes a really critical intervention because it embraces a diasporic blackness that disrupts this idea. For example, reggaetón’s ties to hip-hop and dancehall bring up larger connections between Puerto Ricans and other African diasporic populations in the Americas rather than privileging Spain, as racial democracy tends to do. And this foregrounds blackness as something that is integral and relevant to contemporary Puerto Rican identities. Also, this produces a space to critique racism, which, in turn, discredits racial democracy.
How does reggaetón both confirm societal views about race and gender but also challenge us to think about these issues in transformative ways?
Many of the criticisms we hear of reggaetón have to do with the music’s treatment of women – that it has misogynistic lyrics or the videos objectify women, things like that. And often times these criticisms are valid. I think that here the intersection of race and gender is very important. Hypersexual representations of men and women in reggaetón often reflect stereotypes of black and Latino sexuality, for example. So I do think in many instances reggaetón performance can be interpreted as confirming dominant views about racial groups.
But I don’t think that’s the whole story. In the book, I really try to highlight these contradictions and show that there are times when reggaetón problematically reinforces ideas about race and gender, but there are also many times when I think it offers alternative ideas about blackness or identity that counter a lot of these stereotypes, like I have already mentioned. So things like embracing a diasporic blackness or talking openly about police brutality – that kind of thing can really challenge ideas about blackness in a place like Puerto Rico.
In the end, this is all pretty contradictory. But I don’t think that is unique to reggaetón – it’s something we see in most popular music. A lot of genres that we think of now as being pretty accepted, like jazz or salsa, were subject to criticisms of how they embraced blackness or to assumptions that they would promote inappropriate sexual behavior. And similar criticisms are leveled against other popular genres in the Americas besides reggaetón. Look at what Remezcla just reported a few months ago about champeta in Colombia, for example, or the criticisms of Nicki Minaj and her “Anaconda” video. Some people might think that “Anaconda” simply reproduces stereotypes of black women, but others might argue that she is exaggerating them precisely to make a sort of social critique – and still others might argue that claiming and celebrating one’s sexuality is a feminist act. So I think that there are lots of ways popular music both confirms and counters of dominant narratives about race and gender, and this contradiction is actually part of what attracts me to music as something to study.
How do you think the growth of U.S. Latino population has fueled the popularity of reggaetón in the U.S. and abroad?
Well, I think the first thing is that reggaetón is indebted partially to streams of migration to the U.S. We can think of, for example, Nuyorican participation in the development of hip-hop, which is extremely important for the development of reggaetón. There are also many reggaetón singers who we think of as based in Puerto Rico who spent significant time in the U.S.. So for me, part of the difficulty of this question is that when we think about reggaetón and Puerto Ricans’ involvement in the genre, it is difficult to distinctly separate the island from the U.S. And this makes sense – Puerto Ricans have a long history of back and forth migration between the U.S. and the island, and many of the biggest Puerto Rican musicians historically have been connected to both. Think about the importance of New York in something like the Fania All-Stars, which included Puerto Ricans from both the island and the mainland (and other Latinos) and was absolutely crucial for the development and popularity of salsa around the globe. Or Tito Puente is another Puerto Rican considered to have revolutionized Latin music – and he was from New York. So I think we have to be careful about making these distinctions sometimes, because we really can’t understand reggaetón (or other types of music) or the Puerto Rican experience without recognizing the important contributions of the Puerto Rican diaspora.
Pop music both confirms and counters of dominant narratives about race and gender.
That said, as I mentioned before, I think that the recognition of U.S. Latino youth as consumers helped fuel reggaetón since they provided an audience for the music. Of course, the Latin music industry targets any music that is in Spanish or Portuguese, including groups that have largely Latin American audiences. But, many of the super large companies are based in the U.S., and U.S. companies have long had an interest in developing a Latino consumer base. So I think in that sense its not wholly surprising that “Gasolina” came out in the U.S. at the same time that these larger media industries like radio and television and record labels dedicated to reggaetón were developing all over the country. Though we know that many Latin American artists are profoundly successful with a predominantly Latin American fan base (and this includes reggaetón singers who did have an international presence beyond Puerto Rico prior to “Gasolina”), I do think that this attempt to court U.S. Latino consumers of reggaetón certainly contributed to its international popularity.
What do you think the future of reggaetón is?
This is interesting, because when I first started this project a lot of people were proclaiming the death of reggaetón, that this music was a fad that was going to go away eventually. And it’s true that we don’t have as many radio stations dedicated exclusively to reggaetón as there used to be, just to give one example. At the same time, I think that a lot of artists continue to have really lucrative careers, including people like Ivy Queen or Don Omar or Daddy Yankee who have been around for a long time. And we also see some new artists coming out as well as some new reggaetón scenes in other countries – or, in some cases, these scenes are not actually that new but people in the U.S. are starting to pay more attention to them. But like any form of popular music, reggaetón is evolving and changing and I think that’s a good thing and that will continue to happen. I don’t really think it’s going anywhere.
Petra Rivera-Rideau is an Assistant Professor at Virginia Tech University