Whiteness and Reggaeton
I wish they hadn’t gotten on this subject since I had done a fair amount of research into the whole phonology of reggaeton. When I realized that to figure out what I wanted to know would take me an assload of time, I shelved it for now.
http://postpomonuyorican.blogspot.com/2009/06/reggaetons-white-hope-and-reggaeton.html
http://wayneandwax.com/?p=2015
I wrote a little about Calle 13 here
And I have done a little study on the selection of everything from artists’ names to the choices of sample as indicators of both the artists’ races and the race of the intended audience. I’ll clean it up and post it all one day.
I was wondering about it one day because some lyrics and music specifically speak to me as a woman of african descent. I can pretty much tell by the name of an artist if he considers himself black, and by much of the music if his intended audience is black or urban.
Black names, even in PR tend to be identifiable as black names. I noticed specifically because a few songs I found EXTREMELY appealing and when listening and writing I noticed it was because there was a particular combination of letters in most of the words in the verses I was singing along to.
At least one of my names is African and many of my oldest friends have African, specifically Bantu(ish),names. So in the lyrics I hear my name, and the names of people I grew up with. Particular sound combinations not found in English and not common in nonCaribbean Spanish.
And I’ve noticed a tendency for lyrics by blacker artists to have a blacker sound. I think the word fans use would be “hard”. More African-ish “phonemes”. More of a “bomba carabomba” flow.
A friend asked how modern black people who speak no African languages would recognize the sounds. Many black females have names that fit the “Mandinga” pattern, regardless of the language the name is from. And many black males have names that fit the “Kunta” pattern.
(Go make a list of black people you know, particularly those whose parents have a strong black identity. How many are xaYUxa. Consontant, schwa,stressed consonant, scwah, consonant, a
Laquisha
Laquita
Larronda
Ashanti
Cassandra
Felicia
Tamika
Malaika
Kamilah
Lucrecia
Quiana
Most ppl I know hear 2 syllable female names as white, or more precisely “not black”
Kelly
Molly
Amy
Taylor
Tyler
Susan
Connie
Donna
Becky (even if she is ReBEca. I bet black Rebeccas are Rebecca and white ones are Becky.)
(Note- in the mainstream media the name is L L Cool J. In the streets it ellelCOOljay. Mainstream- Queen Latifah. Streets- Queenla TIfah. Micajax uN. Micajor Den)
ANYWAY, that is one way that a preference for certain sounds has been preserved. And in music, we had doowop and scatting and beatboxing in the US, which I partially attribute to a preference for phonemes not found in English. Lacking proper words, sounds were substituted. Spanish, however, happens to have words that fit quite nicely.
Since most reggaeton and merengue artists use their name in their lyrics, their chosen names also tend to have good “flow”.And by noticing that pattern, I can frequently guess what a rappers lyrics will sound like just by hearing his stage name.
The bottom line is that I hear in the names used by artists and the words they use both explicit and implicit references to their blackness and that of their intended audience.
Of course I haven’t had the time to gather enough evidence and study it to see if its merely a hunch or if I have a clue. But just by personal experience, I can tell by an artists name if them music is gonna suck.
Guess what? The damn screen is too small to post and I gotta work. I’ll leave this hanging and let u read what I have so far. Ciao.
