Cubanow.- It might seem that a new fad is filling our ears and taking hold -like all trends- of a good part of our minds and wills and, of course, with many opinions in favor and against.

The long existence of “trends” and their aims of satisfying circumstantial -and sometimes unimportant- human needs can confuse us and might make us consider without due care that which requires a critical and sensible examination.

In a country such as Cuba, where music plays such an important role in the lives of its people, a “new musical trend” (which, if we look at it closely is not so new) gets us into arguments and makes us reason some truths along with some misconceptions.

Now we're arguing about the phenomenon called reggaeton (in Spanish: regueton) which has made its way into our country in the same fashion many expressions of our popular music have done: from east to west.

To begin to attempt a definition, we would have to place it in the Caribbean region and then make a series of reasonings in which we must include a main feature: the Caribbean has always been a region of intense cultural exchanges which have caused different transcultural processes in each of the countries that form the basin washed by the waters on this side of the Atlantic Ocean.

The history of calypso, socca, son, rumba, merengue, plena and bomba -just to mention some of our musical expressions- are good examples of not only musical but also general cultural influences have interacted.

Not even jazz escapes those processes because in the cities in the south of the United States -like New Orleans- it has fueled on what was coming from Meridional countries.

We would also have to keep in mind similar historical processes in the formation of the different cultures found today in the Caribbean Basin. The African Diaspora and its blend with European elements contributed by the conquerors, was just the beginning of the action of that ajiaco –a term we now take from a distinctive stew in Cuban culinary culture to apply it to general culture such as the sage Don Fernando Ortiz did when he defined what was Cuban.

A great number of influences from all around the world, reaching the Caribbean at different periods, have added themselves to the “stew” and today this increases with the possibilities offered us by the media, including Internet.

Even James Farber -a US reporter from the New York Daily News, who probably got excited over this- has called reggaeton “a cultural polyglot”.

Other equally important elements have made daily contributions to the proliferation of fads and modalities found in reggaeton; among them, we must stress the high marketing level music has today in the contemporary world.

It's not by chance that Miami’s Music Czar Emilio Estefan has shown so much interest in the work of Puerto Rican reggaeton musician Don Omar, or the fact that Sony Music has dedicated space in its productions to members of the reggaeton family, like Buddha’s Family, Mickey Perfecto or Noztra, or that Universal -another great music producer and distributor- has also become interested in that Caribbean phenomenon.

You have to sell recordings and that's done where marketing points to. In the contemporary world, trade is centralized in urban zones, which are their basic sources of income because most of the circulation of merchandise takes place there and the buyers are the great number of people who live there.

If we take into consideration that a good amount of that public is formed by people with low incomes whose culture is formed in the group of values determined by their belonging to a basically dispossessed and politically dominated social class, we can have an idea of the kind of artistic product they can buy.

In general terms, the young people who belong to those classes and social groups buy cultural products that have to do with their own life, in which city violence, crime, social and racial discrimination as well as the exacerbation of certain sexual ideas are their daily food. The lyrics of reggaeton are fueled on those values and that's a sure source of consumption -and of course, of profits.

The magnification of certain social and moral features found in the songs doesn’t seem to matter too much to the sellers of that culture, as long as its promotion means a sure flow of money in their pockets. We receive that inheritance from the world masters regarding profits and losses: US dealers.

For the big music promoters in the US -such as Dick Clark with his American Bandstand show, who since the 1960s has made thousands of dollars a year- the quality of the message found in the music and the song is not the main problem. He admitted in an interview: “I don't make culture, I sell it.”

The realities of many Caribbean countries offer favorable environments for the increase in reggaeton sales.

The phenomenon apparently started in Panama when El General sold a huge number of discs, and later in Puerto Rico the process continued with the appearance of Vico C, whose messages were full of sexism and certain urban violence. This movement, that goes back to the 1980s and early 90s, immediately reflected a way of understanding life governed by the interests of the sellers who promoted it.

The realities of the poorest sectors in the cities found a simplified and schematically manipulated version in the lyrics of those who played reggaeton and even in the way they danced -like the so-called “perreo” (perro is dog) which imitates the movements dogs make during the sexual act.

In the case of Cuba, the phenomenon takes on very peculiar characteristics because, even though the economic reality isn't the same as that of its Caribbean neighbors, the crisis caused by the collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe and dramatically depicted during the 1990s, the increase of the US blockade top take advantage of those circumstances, and the problems common to the construction and sustenance of an equalitarian society in a poor country, created economical situations which had their consequences in the ethical and social stratums based on the establishment of financial differences among citizens -which had not been experienced by Cubans in the three previous decades.

To all that, some feelings were added, caused by the remnants of social discrimination still found in spite of the efforts made to eliminate them in the economic, political, and cultural fields.

As a result of all those circumstances, to which we should add the presence of a “reggaeton culture” in the Caribbean region, the phenomenon started to grow in the 90s, especially in the eastern provinces where the nearness of the Caribbean is much stronger.

However, if we pay attention to our own cultural history, we would also find that in the music considered by some scholars as “Cuban folklore,” there have always been expressions very close to the way reggaeton musicians approach their songs -or whatever these may be called. They're not lyrics that stay close to a melodic line but they do adjust to certain musical metrics and adapt to the rhythm of the work in point.

They're lyrics with music that we find in certain Congo prayers or in the Abakua enkames and even in certain ways of approaching the rumba.

In addition, my great friend and a true scholar of Cuban music, Gregorio Hernandez -El Goyo- tells me that in reggaeton’s rhythmic scheme not only are there elements of the Puerto Rican plena but also of yambu -one of the oldest rumberas in our country- and even in some beats of our wonderful bata drums.

An important role is played by the oral transmission of music, which is the way many reggaeton musicians receive each other (and, sometimes, endure each other) when we simply walk along the streets or go to some public place for food or drinks.

African heritage has been completely present in the expressions of orality dealing both with religious and profane matters. We would just have to pay attention to the shouts of those ambling troubadours who, for years and years, have been the keepers of the history of entire peoples, in addition to offering advice, remarking on the situation and moving the ideas of those who listen to them.

The culture of Guinea, Gambia, and Mali –just to mention some northern and western African countries- is today still full of those expressions. Oral poetry is very common among Africans as well as its link to music. Not only does it depend on its interior cadence but also on the way in which it is regularly expressed before the public.

This orality is a legacy treasured by Caribbean peoples and incorporated to the region's contemporary cultures. In what today we sing and enjoy, in what we hear, we find the echoes that support reggaeton musicians today.

I now remember how a well known 1960’s actor, Harry Lewis, sang to “pangola grass,” the extensive planting of which was then promoted so that we could reach a high level of fodder. Harry self-defined himself as the “precursor” of rap in Cuba and I think he could also be included among the reggaeton musicians in history, although he never achieved the place that the great market reserves for its chosen ones.

The truth is that orality is one of the ways Africans and their descendants availed themselves when they came to our lands to keep a culture that is still flourishing. Even African languages are musical; therefore, in the notes of the drums that virtuoso musicians make from the hides, words and even phrases can slip through making the drums “talk.”

Finally, reggaeton also has a very worthy source in the most recent Caribbean culture. I would call your attention to the “dub” poetry movement.

This cultural phenomenon has Linton Kwesi Jonson among its most prominent cultivators -a Jamaican who first developed his poetic work in London surrounded by a completely racist and discriminating atmosphere, which encouraged him to join the rebellions of the Black Panthers during the 1970s and to follow the socialist ideas that he skillfully blends into his creations.

He, along with others, like Mutabaruka or Oku Onuora, has approached the social reality of black people in the cities, saying their lyrics with the backing of reggae rhythm and melody, and that makes them very real precursors of a way of making art, which could be among the best of the influences which give way to current reggaeton.

In face of this reality, the only thing we can do is to seriously study this phenomenon which has quickly spread throughout our country and which occupies a space in the entertainment of many of our youths.

It's not about accepting obscenities or brutal simplifications of music and art like many reggaeton musicians opportunistically do and are willing to go on doing to earn some crumbs and fill the pockets of culture’s merchants; rather, it's about turning our senses back to our reality and taking from it the best it has to teach.

We must not ignore the fact that many cycle-taxi drivers in Havana -those who carry a radio on their vehicle to make the client's trip more pleasant or to satisfy their own preference and that of many other taxi drivers- are broadcasters of the reggaeton that can be heard along the streets.

We must inquire, explain to ourselves why it's important for them and for many of their clients, and more than that: why vigorous expressions of Cuban music such as rumba –just to mention one- have not been broadcast widely enough so that they become the heritage of these popular promoters?

In his speech delivered on September 23, 1891, on the occasion of October 10, in the Masonic Temple in New York, Jose Marti advised us: “to not foresee is a public crime and, a greater one not to act, due to incapacity or fear, according to what is foreseen.”

April , 2005