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COPYRIGHT 2005 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
Sales of Latin music rose twelve per cent over the past year--the only pop category to experience an uptick. Latin music, the industry term for Spanish-language records, owes much of its commercial vitality to three very different phenomena: RBD, a Mexican pop group whose members are actors on a popular soap opera; Shakira, a twenty-eight-year-old Colombian-Lebanese singer, who released albums in English and in Spanish this year and who performs in so many different styles that she is practically her own musical category; and, especially, reggaeton, the first genre in Spanish to become part of mainstream pop.
Reggaeton consists of rapping in Spanish over rhythms derived from Jamaican dancehall and salsa. These styles have existed for years, but until the nineties, when Puerto Rican artists began putting them together, Spanish rapping sounded like a stepchild of American hip-hop. Reggaeton turned the beat around. Rather than stressing the first pulse in every measure, the music accents offbeats, and the difference is evident on the dance floor: reggaeton speaks to hips, hip-hop to heads and shoulders. The music's syncopated movement suits the hard phonemes and quick cadences of Puerto Rican Spanish; the best reggaeton vocalists create long,...
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