Unhealthy Bunny loves to remind the arena the place he and his song come from.
In “EoO,” a tune from his 2025 album “DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS,” he raps, “‘Tás escuchando música de Puerto Rico” (“You’re being attentive to song from Puerto Rico”). In a similar way, within the album’s moment monitor, “VOY A LLeVARTE PA PR,” he pronounces that each he and reggaeton had been born in Puerto Rico: “Aquí nací yo y el reggaetón, pa’ que sepa’.”
Puerto Rican artists like Unhealthy Bunny unquestionably helped popularize the style. However they didn’t create it.
In my very own analysis of Latin The usa, I’ve explored how reggaeton comes from the small Central American country of Panama, the place the sound emerged from a swirl of sonic influences that incorporated Spanish conquistadors, Caribbean immigrants and American colonizers.
English and Spanish collide
Working out reggaeton calls for figuring out the intermingling of cultures and languages that Panama skilled over a slightly brief time period.
After Panama received its independence from Spain in 1821, it become a part of Gran Colombia, which, at its top, incorporated modern day Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador and Panama.
During the Nineteenth century, Panama skilled inhabitants enlargement and mass industrialization, and waves of Afro Caribbean immigrants arrived in northern Panama looking for financial alternatives. Since they got here from former British colonies, a lot of them spoke English. In the meantime, the various Afro Panamanians already dwelling within the nation, whose descendants have been trafficked as slaves, spoke Spanish.
Those linguistic distinctions ended in two number one teams of Black other people in Panama: Spanish-speaking Afro Panamanians and English-speaking West Indians. They labored along one any other on building initiatives, such because the trans-Isthmus railroad, within the mid-Nineteenth century. However with their other languages, colonial histories and cultures, they didn’t at all times get alongside.
In 1903, Panama separated from Gran Colombia, changing into the unbiased country we all know nowadays. The U.S. had supported Panama’s independence for strategic causes: It sought after to construct and keep an eye on the Panama Canal to safe affect over maritime business and army motion within the Western Hemisphere. Whilst Gran Colombia had rebuffed previous U.S. overtures, leaders of the newly unbiased Panama had been extra receptive to American pursuits.
Jim Crow is imported to the Canal Zone
Police brutality, exploitation and intra-racial and interracial tensions additionally served as scaffolding for reggaeton.
All through the canal’s building, the U.S. operated and regulated the Panama Canal Zone, a 553 square-mile (1,432 square-kilometer) parcel of land encompassing the canal. As much as 60,000 other people lived there whilst the canal was once being constructed, with citizens segregated by way of race into “gold roll” and “silver roll” staff. Gold roll staff had been typically white. Silver roll staff had been Black, and so they had been tasked with probably the most unhealthy jobs.
The Canal Zone’s white citizens had been some distance much more likely to have get entry to to well being products and services and feature right kind sanitation; Afro Panamanian and immigrant staff from Barbados, the Antilles, Jamaica and different Caribbean international locations had been a lot more more likely to be uncovered to – and die from – malaria.
West Indians and Afro Panamanians additionally skilled police brutality. Black ladies, specifically, had been careworn by way of white law enforcement officials, who continuously accused them of intercourse paintings.
Whilst each West Indians and Afro Panamanians had been subjected to segregation and police brutality, the American citizens working the Canal Zone tended to regard the English-speaking West Indians higher. In the meantime, youngsters born and raised within the Canal Zone had been handiest taught English in colleges, which Afro Panamanians resented.
Those tensions resulted in the upward push of “panameñismo,” a motion that sought to keep and advertise Spanish language and tradition in Panama. This motion culminated within the passing of restrictive immigration regulations focused at West Indians and stripping second-generation West Indians in their citizenship.
In spite of those anti-West Indian insurance policies, many Jamaican, Barbadian and Antillean immigrants who had already constructed a lifestyles in Panama remained within the nation even after the canal was once finished in 1914.
Laborers paintings from scaffolding all the way through the development of the gates of Gatun Locks on the Panama Canal, c. 1914.
Detroit Publishing Corporate/Library of Congress by the use of Getty Photographs
Reggae with a Spanish twist
Within the Sixties and Seventies, Jamaicans offered 3 subgenres of reggae – mento, ska and dancehall – to Panama.
The lyrics had been in English and Jamaican Patois, an English-based creole language. Nevertheless it didn’t take lengthy for an offshoot of reggae, “reggae en español,” to emerge. Via the tip of the Seventies, reggae en español had change into in style in Panama and had unfold during Latin The usa. In a similar way, the nascent style of hip-hop was once gaining steam within the U.S. and in the end made its solution to Panama, the place an American presence had remained for the reason that final touch of the canal. It wasn’t till 1979 that the Canal Zone was once abolished, and Panama didn’t have possession over the canal till 2000.
It was once out of this numerous mixture of musical and linguistic influences that reggaeton was once born, a style that includes the looping drum trend – known as “dembow riddim” – of Jamaican dancehall, the tropical vibe of reggae and a mix of rapping and making a song. Like reggae and hip-hop, reggaeton lyrics continuously emphasize Black team spirit and talk out towards racial oppression and police violence.
The Panamanian artist Renato is credited with liberating the primary reggaeton tune, titled, “El D.E.N.I.,” in 1985.
The D.E.N.I. – an acronym for the Departamento Nacional de Investigaciones, or Nationwide Division of Investigations – was once a device of repression for Panama’s army dictatorship beneath Omar Torrijos within the Seventies and later beneath Manuel Noriega within the Nineteen Eighties. The name of the game police pressure become entangled in drug trafficking and political corruption.
In ‘El D.E.N.I.,’ Renato denounces police brutality and racism.
Within the tune, Renato assumes the function of a racist police officer, the type he encountered after relocating from the Canal Zone to Rio Abajo, an impoverished community in Panama Town:
Con mi cara albina, te puedo golpear …
(With my albino face, I will be able to hit you …)
Te voy a enseñar
(I’m going to show you)
Que a l. a. justicia no se puede burlar
(That you can not make amusing of the justice gadget)
After its free up, the monitor become a protest anthem towards Panama’s army executive.
Whilst Renato’s reputation was once rising in Panama, early Panamanian reggaeton artists and manufacturers like El Basic had been taking part with Jamaican and American artists in New York Town, the place the underground dancehall and “hip-hop en español” scene thrived.
Although El Basic essentially produced song, certainly one of his tracks, “No Mas Guerra,” channeled the preventing spirit of unique reggaeton, calling for Latin American communities to return in combination to finish violence and wars.
A sanitized model of reggaeton is going mainstream
In spite of no longer being chargeable for its introduction, Puerto Rico is the place the style went mainstream – in large part due to the preferred Puerto Rican artist Daddy Yankee.
Daddy Yankee’s song unfold, partially, due to American manufacturers like Kellogg’s and Reebok, whose advertisements that includes his songs had been broadcast to American audiences. Few of his tracks contained the social justice topics that characterised early reggaeton.
In the meantime, Tego Calderon, a Black Puerto Rican reggaeton artist, struggled to discover a purchaser for his 2003 debut album, “El Abayarde,” after being advised he was once too unsightly for a musical profession – a commentary rooted within the anti-Blackness that’s pervasive in Puerto Rico.
Calderon’s revel in within the trade and as a Black Puerto Rican dictated how he seen the style and created his song. Like Calderon, Renato and different Black reggaeton artists have spoken out towards racism in reggaeton.
Reggaeton artist Tego Calderon plays on the BMG Song Exhibit at Billboard Are living in Miami Seaside in 2003.
Rodrigo Varela/WireImage by the use of Getty Photographs
Bringing reggaeton again to its roots
Regardless that he can have the style’s historical past relatively fallacious, Unhealthy Bunny’s personal tracks go back to reggaeton’s social justice roots.
Carried out all the way through the Tremendous Bowl halftime display by way of Ricky Martin, Unhealthy Bunny’s “LO QUE LE PASÓ A HAWAii” describes the historical past of U.S. colonialism in Hawaii and Puerto Rico, stating how native communities had been compelled out by way of gentrifiers:
Quieren quitarme el río y también l. a. playa
(They wish to take the river and the seashore clear of me)
Quieren al barrio mío y que tus hijos se vayan
(They would like my community and to your youngsters to depart)
And whilst the early-2000s reggaeton popularized by way of Daddy Yankee, Tego Calderon and Don Omar contained parts of misogyny and homophobia, Unhealthy Bunny’s tracks “Yo Perreo Sola” and “YO VISTO ASÍ” construct on feminist reggaeton anthems like Ivy Queen’s “Yo Quiero Bailar.”
Reggaeton was once born out of a decision for freedom, equality and justice. So I in finding it becoming that Unhealthy Bunny is growing song that speaks to all forms of other people from far and wide the arena.
