Portal:Puerto Rico/Selected articles/11

Reggaeton is a form of urban music which became popular with Latin American (or Latino) youth during the early 1990s and spread over the course of 10 years to North American, European, Asian, and Australian audiences. Reggaeton blends Jamaican music influences of reggae and dancehall with those of Latin America, such as bomba and plena, as well as that of hip hop. The music is also combined with rapping in Spanish, English or 'Spanglish'. Reggaeton has given the Hispanic youth a musical genre that they can consider their own.

While it takes influences from hip hop and Jamaican dancehall and hip hop, Reggaeton has its own specific beat and rhythm, whereas Latino hip hop is simply hip hop recorded by artists of Latino descent. The specific rhythm that characterizes reggaeton is referred to as “Dem Bow,” a reference to the title of the dancehall song by Shabba Ranks that first popularized the beat in the early 1990s. Its origins represents a hybrid of many different musical genres and influences from various countries in the Caribbean, Latin America and the United States. The genre of reggaeton is most closely associated with Puerto Rico, as this is where the musical style later popularized and became most famous, and where the vast majority of its current stars originate from. (more...)