This week on The Wheelhouse For Connecticut Public, I'm Frankie Graziano.

This is The Wheelhouse.

It's a show that connects politics to the people.

We got your weekly dose of politics in Connecticut and beyond right here.

Ah, you hear the music.

That's Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio or Bad Bunny.

Last year on the show, we discuss the trapper's music and political influence on Puertorriquenos y Boricuas.

In the time since we did the show, his stardom has only grown brighter.

The first students have already taken Bad Bunny class at Yale University, and Bad Bunny staged a performance on one of America's biggest stages.

February Super Bowl halftime show.

Bad Bunny and his influence on the archipelago of Puerto Rico are the subject of a new book were going to talk about on the show today.

Its called Peh FKN Eh Reh How Bad Bunny Became the Global Voice of the the Puerto Rican Resistance.

The coauthors of the book are on The Wheelhouse today.

Petra Rivera-Rideau is one of them.

She's an associate professor of American studies, researching Latin music and racial politics at Wellesley College in Massachusetts.

Hello, Petra.

Hi.

Thanks for having us on.

Yeah.

Good to see you.

Good to hear from you.

And great to hear the book.

Oh, man, that was a great that was a great experience.

Vanessa Diaz is the other co-author.

Shes also an associate professor of chicana and latino studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.

Vanessa, welcome to the Wheelhouse Thank you so much for having me.

And great to meet you.

I'm so excited to talk to you all here.

Vanessa, I'm going to give you the first question.

Bad Bunny is the subject of the book, Vanessa, but you're also sort of using him to shed light on the historic political connection between Puerto Rico and its colonizer, the United States.

Right?

Absolutely.

I mean, I think that one of the key points of the book is to show that a Puerto Ricans have been resisting colonialism since since their first colonizers, which was Spain, right onto now, and that a lot of that has happened not just through sort of traditional, ways of uprising and political activism, but through music and the arts that that Puerto Rico has this incredibly rich history of using arts, dance, all different kinds of musical genres as forms of resistance.

And Bad Bunny is an extension of that.

And so because of that, we really cannot understand Bad Bunny and his music without understanding the history of Puerto Rico and the history of Puerto Rican resistance that he represents.

Panther.

Let's do the history one on one here.

When I talk to Puerto Rican, you know, some of them tell me that they have Taino blood.

These were the people indigenous to batik.

And, what the area was once called.

Then what happens?

Yeah.

Yes.

Well, this is, a filthy long question.

Right?

But I think, Puerto Rico has a long and complex history, and we definitely can't go through the whole thing right now.

But yes, you're right.

So the indigenous people or the Taino people or the Spanish come in 1492, and they begin to colonize the islands.

As Vanessa said, there's a long history of resistance, including of the Taino people who resisted Spanish colonization.

Puerto Rico, like the Americas, becomes a slave society.

So they have enslaved Africans in Puerto Rico.

They don't end slavery until the 1870s.

And there is a kind of robust pro-independence movement from Spain happening in the 19th century.

In fact, people will know that the Puerto Rican flag and the Cuban flag for instance, are really similar.

They're the same design, but inverted colors.

And this is because Cuban and Puerto Rican activists in the United States who were planning, the independence from Spain, you know, shared making the flag.

Right.

So, this is happening.

And then in 1898, the Spanish-American War happens and the United States acquires Puerto Rico, along with Cuba and the Philippines from Spain.

And so in our book, we're using Bad Bunny as a hook to bring people in, to look at Puerto Rico.

And we're really focusing on the more contemporary kind of, history with US colonization.

What some Puerto Rican scholars called the American century began in 1898.

But there's a whole lot.

But you did it, but you did it.

We needed to do it in a we don't want to be reductive, but we needed to do it in a short amount of time to get to this question.

That's right.

So many times when people talk about Puerto Rico's relationship with the rest of the United States, we hear the Jones Act explain what that is and at least what it what how it, how it, comes to be with contemporary history.

Yeah.

So in 1917, there's the Jones Act, passed by U.S.

Congress.

So when the U.S.

takes over Puerto Rico in 1898, Puerto Rico is governed by governors who are appointed by the U.S.

president.

Right.

And the United States is concerned about what to do with Puerto Ricans.

And if you look at some of the, like, historical data about the congressional hearings, the Supreme Court case is called the Insular Cases that happened in the early 1900s.

A lot of the concern was about Puerto Ricans racial makeup, right, because they have Spanish ancestry, but also African ancestry and indigenous ancestry.

Right.

These are the times of segregation in the United States.

And you're trying to figure out if Puerto Ricans could become U.S.

citizens.

Finally, in 1917, Congress passes this act, which makes Puerto Ricans wherever they are born, citizens of the United States.

But the citizenship is complicated.

So Puerto Ricans have a sort of, partial citizenship.

If they live in Puerto Rico, for instance, they have no voting representation in Congress.

They cannot vote for the US president.

However, Puerto Ricans can be drafted into the military.

And in fact, when Puerto Ricans became citizens in 1917, this is the time of World War one.

Many Puerto Ricans were drafted into the US military.

So this is a complex kind of finagling of citizenship happening with Puerto Ricans that really shaped everything.

And I think in many ways sort of secures the colonial kind of relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States.

Vanessa, you write that the U.S.

Constitution supersedes the Constitution of Puerto Rico.

What does that mean?

So like in the context of the last like 75 years or so and, and why it's in the book, help us with that context.

Yeah.

So this is really an extension of what Petra was just discussing in terms of that solidification of what it means for Puerto Rico to be a colony of the US.

And so when we when we think about how to talk about Puerto Rico, many people struggle to kind of actually just say the words that it's a colony because they're like, oh, but it's called something else.

It's a commonwealth, it's a territory.

It's a part of the U.S., which in fact, legally it is not a part of the US.

It is a property of the U.S.

it is a possession of the U.S.

that is not the same as being a part of my.

My arms are a part of my body.

My wallet is something I can take off of my body from my pocket.

Right?

So it's these.

It is a possession.

And so the idea that the US Constitution supersedes anything that Puerto Rico may want for themselves is to underscore that we are not talking about a sovereign nation.

We are talking about a nation that is governed and controlled at the end of the day, by an external power.

The US in this case.

And that is the definition of colonialism.

So you can label it whatever you like.

But if you look at the idea of Puerto Rico as a possession, it is a territory.

It does not have sovereignty.

That is a colony.

And so it's really these details really help you kind of understand that we can talk about it in different terms, but it's actually quite clear.

So how does all this history you provide set the stage for Bad Bunny's entree into the narrative?

He's born in 1994.

Yeah.

Bad Bunny is go ahead.

But no, you can go ahead.

Bad Bunny is born in 1994, and this is at a time when Puerto Rico, as a result of this history of colonization, is experiencing a great many different kinds of crises and, and different levels of a financial crisis.

Now, they're not sort of at their peak when he's born, but not long after he's born, there is a tax code and better, you know, the number of the tax code.

I'm going to forget it right now.

936 whoa.

936.

Oh eight plus.

This is this is a tax code, that had given various kinds of benefits to foreign corporations, largely U.S.

corporations, to expand their business in Puerto Rico.

And when this tax benefit ends, these companies leave.

And even though there's a lot of discussion around sort of how beneficial overall these tax codes were for the average Puerto Rican, the reality is that there were jobs attached to these things and that as a result of this, like exodus from Puerto Rico, when this tax benefit ends, that people are losing their jobs, that there are lots of different kinds of cuts happening.

And it's not just the people who worked in these places.

And so Bad Bunny as a kid is experiencing these things in an quite clear way is I mean, he talked about this in, in different moments that his family was directly impacted by, by these different moments of financial crisis that come to a head, in 2015.

And, and then this is again, like how this is a very complicated, but essentially Puerto Rico finds itself in massive debt, in 2015, cannot repay the debt.

And and so this cycle that kind of starts in the 90s really kind of explodes.

And, and as this is happening, then, Puerto Rico, because it's a colony, doesn't have the same rights to do things like file for bankruptcy or borrow money from other nations.

Right.

And so, the US then passes Promesa under Obama, and this leads to, again, massive cuts to education, to pensions, job loss across the board, mass exodus of people from the island and so, so bad.

Bunny, this history of colonialism doesn't doesn't stop.

It just keeps kind of expanding and the extent to which the average Puerto Rican feels these things.

Bad Bunny is part of this generation that really felt the direct consequences of colonization.

In his lifetime.

And so we see that in his music in every way.

And we can talk a lot about that.

The synergy between the three of us is very real.

We are in three different states right now, but it feels like we are one force because 2015, as Vanessa just said, that's around the time this guy's making beats on a laptop in college.

Right, Pietra?

Yeah.

That's right.

So he is bad Bunny is making music on his computer with using, software called FL studio, but which was at one point called Fruity Loops.

Really important in the history of reggaeton.

And he's a SoundCloud member, so he's put uploading his songs on SoundCloud and he gains traction with a song called Venus, and that causes a local record label culture this music to pay attention to him and sign him.

And that's how he enters the music industry.

Eventually he switches to another independent label called dreamers, which is the label he's currently on.

And really becomes very quickly the face, the voice, the kind of symbol of Latin trap, which is a genre of music that borrows a lot from trap in the United States.

And is kind of, a sort of dark music a lot about, like, life in the streets.

A lot of very sexually explicit lyrics.

And I think one of the things that Bad Bunny does is that he starts to write some songs that depart a little bit from that, most notably a big hit for him, which was called Swipe There.

And that song is a song that could be listened to or recorded in almost any genre.

Right?

It's it's a kind of breakup song.

And it's a very classic kind of trap beat.

And it also showcases his voice, which is very different.

He has a very deep kind of melodic voice, which is pretty different compared to other Latin trap artists.

And that's kind of what sets him off.

But it is right around the time, right, that that this financial crisis comes to a head that from his past, that Latin trap begins to surge in Puerto Rico.

And the other little kind of case of context in Latin music history around this time is Despacito.

Right?

So Desperado comes out in 2017, and for a lot of people, Despacito is like the epitome of the pop ification of reggaeton, right?

Great.

Don't have Puerto Rico was a genre that was associated with, working class communities, a lot of public housing developments, often black communities.

And it became kind of the sound of mainstream Latin pop epitomize and Despacito.

And for a song, Latin trap was part of sort of like the counterpoint to that, you know, this assumption that reggaeton has become pop.

So we have Latin trap now to kind of be the real music for the real people.

And that's where kind of Bad Bunny enters.

And then in later in 2017, we have two hurricanes.

We have Hurricane Irma and then Maria, which hits just days later, Vanessa, when there's a little rain on the island.

For the uninitiated, it's not good for the infrastructure.

Right now, we're talking about the ultimate, weather events here.

Yeah, I mean, it's all of these things become extensions of this same history of colonization, right?

And and these this very precarious financial situation that Puerto Rico, is in just prior to the hitting of this, this hurricane that has that particularly Irma was, was was a higher category.

Hurricane.

But Hurricane Maria was much more, destructive in its nature.

And in fact, you know, we will never understand the full level of destruction because simple things like actually tabulating how many people died as a result of this hurricane were not done.

And part of that was to deny how massive this really was, when in fact, based on the independent studies that have been done, we know that this is the most destructive, deadly hurricane in the history of Puerto Rico and in the history of the US.

That led to a blackout.

More than you know, many people on the island were without power for more than a year.

And it tore people apart.

It really I mean, it didn't just lead to thousands of deaths, but it it hit at a time when the island was so down already, the power grid was already suffering because of the, the debt and and the fact that the Puerto Rico was in these terrible financial constraints as a result of colonialism.

And so Bad Bunny is abroad when this hurricane hits.

And like the rest of us in the diaspora, he cannot reach his family.

He doesn't know their fate.

He is.

He is extremely worried.

He gets on social media.

He's rapping about it.

He's talking about it.

He's sharing in the pain.

And and this moment in Puerto Rican history, you know, coming as, as the debt crisis has just, like, been massive to now have this level of destruction, it was really a time when we were we were coming together as a community and also needing voices and Bad Bunny, he made it clear that he was going to talk about this destruction, that he was going to talk about the pain of this.

We see it in his first album.

We see it in his public appearances on American television.

The first time he goes on Jimmy Fallon and he calls out the Trump administration and he talks about the destruction.

But he also points to the joy and the power and the resilience of Puerto Rican people.

And we've got that clip, actually, a clip from The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon in 2018 where Bad Bunny calls out the president and his response, and Maria, take take a listen here.

After one year of the irking those few people with, on their homes, more than 3000 people die on some esteemed denial.

We you know what Donna Beck.

Petra, what did you hear in that clip?

I mean, I think this is a really powerful moment.

As Vanessa mentioned, it's his first time on US television.

We also have to think back.

You know, Jimmy Fallon's show has features a lot of Latin artists now, other global artists relatively often.

But at the time, that was not true.

That Bernie was only the second Spanish language artist on that show, and the first one had happened a few years before.

So I think what's important to remember is that he was criticizing the US for and the Trump administration in particular, for their lackluster response to Hurricane Maria.

He's shedding light on these conditions, the lack of electricity, thousands of people dying.

He's doing it in English, which is really critical.

You know, Bad Bunny speaks more in English now, but he doesn't.

He prefers to do Spanish, and he doesn't speak in English that often.

So.

And at that time, he was still, like, learning English.

Right.

So he's speaking directly to the American people in English, and he's doing it on a platform that a lot of Latin artists really want.

Right.

It's it's sort of a high stakes moment for Spanish language music in the mainstream television, you know, world.

And so for him to say, you know what, I'm just going to use this platform and say this before my performance, I think is really important.

And I think we see there how he continues to do that.

Right.

His platforms have gotten bigger, right?

With the Super Bowl maybe being the biggest one yet.

But that strategy of using his platform to make these statements is still consistent.

Right?

So we really see the beginnings of this bad buddy's kind of, political discourse at this time.

I think.

Vanessa, as I hear in the audio book and you just mentioned that Bad Bunny couldn't reach out to his mother at that time.

I understand this is personal for you.

So if you're not comfortable, we won't talk about it.

But you did, have family that you were trying to locate on the island, including your aunt and your grandfather, as I understand it.

Yeah, it was a really.

It was a really desperate and and difficult time.

My grandfather was in the hospital awaiting surgery when the hurricane hit.

And, I mean, the lengths that we were going to the the diaspora as a community and connecting to all of our families, I had I had friends who were just like, they have family on the west coast of the island, and they were like sending out people to try to find my family members.

We ended up having someone that, like a friend on the east coast of the island, was able to pay them to go and make sure that my family was alive.

And, you know, in the end, my my grandfather was taken and my aunt were both taken on one of the cruise ships that started taking sick and, and elderly people to the mainland us, to the port in Miami, because there was no end in sight.

And I know that when my family was finally tracked down, they had like one bottle of water and a can of tuna fish.

And you have to think about this was my grandfather, who now has passed.

He died here in California, where he did not want to die, but he didn't have the strength to travel back.

And this is the pain of, of of of a veteran of U.S wars who was forced to migrate from his homeland multiple times, first during the times of Operation Bootstrap and then again as a result of Hurricane Maria.

And so the levels of sort of generational intergenerational pain and, and and just disgrace that, that it ends up causing for a people.

It's, it's a really you know, it's it it is there aren't really words to describe it.

I'm so sorry to hear about your grandfather, father, and having heard so many stories from people that were going through it nine years ago now, as it were.

It's just heartbreaking for how people were trying to reach out, how people were having to spend so much money to get loved ones over here if they could.

And then, of course, the blue tarps afterwards and what the island still continues to go through.

So I appreciate you sharing that with us from Connecticut Public.

This is The Wheelhouse.

I'm Frankie Graziano.

You've been listening to Petra Rivera-Rideau and Vanessa Diaz, coauthors of pay for and Eddie, How Bad Bunny became the global voice of Puerto Rican resistance.

After the break.

We're going to transition from Maria to the uprising from people of Puerto Rico in the storm's wake.

Stay tuned for more.

You're listening to The Wheelhouse on Connecticut Public.

This is The Wheelhouse from Connecticut Public Radio.

I'm Frankie Graziano.

That's your perreo, Sola.

The bad Bunny's famed track with a video that shows his comfort with gender fluidity.

It's got 667 million views on YouTube.

Just to put that in perspective, that's roughly double the entire U.S.

population.

Talking about that, talking about Verano Boricua and Perreo in 2019 and how Bad Bunny became the global voice of Puerto Rican resistance right now on The Wheelhouse patron revelatory, though, and Vanessa Diaz, coauthors of the book, are with us right now.

Petra, let's go to July 2019.

And they Verano Boricua, that was a so-called Puerto Rican summer, a political uprising across the island which eventually ousted Puerto Rico's governor.

Talk about what was happening then.

Yeah, that was a huge, huge moment.

So, at the time, the governor was someone in regards to procedure.

He was the son of a former Puerto Rican governor, from the 90s.

He actually was, like, one of the most corrupt governors in history.

But Ricardo to procedure was in power in 2019.

He was in power also when Hurricane Maria hit.

And he really was, you know, people the Trump administration definitely downplayed the deaths of Hurricane Maria.

Rosa Joe did that too, right?

He also oversaw the closure of hundreds of public schools.

Different people in his administration were being tried for corruption.

I mean, he was there was a lot happening.

And at one point, the senator from, the Puerto Rican Center for Investigative Journalism releases 400 pages of private chats between the procedure and his friends, some of whom are members of the cabinet in Puerto Rico.

And these chats are incredibly misogynistic, homophobic, racist.

Are so horrible, they even mock the dead of Hurricane Maria, saying at one point that they're going to feed the bodies to the crows.

They talk about shooting the woman who was the mayor of San Juan at the time, Carmen Jean Cruz.

I mean, they're really, really gross.

And so this is kind of the straw that breaks the camel's back.

And many, many Puerto Ricans come out to protest, and they become some of the biggest protests in Puerto Rican history.

And one of the things that I think is really interesting about these protests, is it really brought together people from all walks of life across socioeconomic backgrounds, generations, racial backgrounds.

I mean, one of the quotes in our book comes from the former governor of Puerto Rico who preceded Roger Alejandro Garcia Padilla.

And he basically says no one was left undefended.

Right.

Everyone was offended by these chat.

But but I think what's really important to note about the protest is that, yes, the chats were, you know, the the immediate thing that precipitated them, but it was, you know, years and years of frustration, in Puerto Rico and especially with prestigious administration, that really kind of, propelled all of these people in these protests.

They lasted over several days in July, and they were successful.

Reschedule.

Resigned.

In the book, one of the things we talk about is that not only with the protest, a massive but they were really creative.

So music and dance was part of the protest.

You know, there were people.

Yeah.

And so there were groups of people doing Paloma, doing Clara, and there was a very famous, moment called The Rail Compatible, in which groups of youth, many queer youths, were dancing period.

The dance associated with reggaeton, on the steps of a cathedral in Old San Juan, not far from the governor's mansion.

And this is really critical because by rail, which is a dance that's often seen as very kind of sexual and inappropriate, was, and now has been targeted by the Puerto Rican government at different times and in terms of censorship and things like that.

But dancing, Dario was kind of like, turning the vulgarity on its head.

Right?

This idea that that, you know, Rojos party is part of the party.

And in fact, his father was one of the governors who tried to censor Yadong during his time.

Right.

And so this is a group of people who are like, using this dance as a form of protest, as a form of joy, but also to point out the hypocrisy of someone like Sergio calling them vulgar when he had done all of these horrible things in the chat.

So it's a really critical moment, and it's a critical moment for Bad Bunny to, because he is in tour in Europe and he leaves his tour to join the protest, and releases a song with president and de la Philando mosquito.

So sharpening the knives.

That is a real blistering fatigue and rosacea and becomes one of the soundtracks of this protest.

Trap music at its finest.

There you got Bad Bunny and you got Ricky Martin there.

As he Dante, as you mentioned.

Explain what that means to the protests.

Having that kind of representation.

Yeah, I mean, I oh, go ahead Vanessa.

I mean that this is part of, you know, why we call the book How Bad Bunny became the global voice of Puerto Rican resistance is that these were massive protests.

These were.

Yes, among the biggest protests in the history of Puerto Rico.

But they were not getting the kind of media attention that the protests ended up getting.

Until these entertainment figures like Bad Bunny joined the cause.

And and so it's not to say Bad Bunny is not the voice of Puerto Rican resistance.

He's the global voice.

And these protests were a moment where we started to see that happening, because he was not at the level of stardom he's at now, but he was already a massive star.

And so it was it was this significant moment where the the celebrities, including Bad Bunny, became this this kind of representative representation of the of the larger collective whole that brought attention to this.

And we always need a soundtrack to protests.

Right?

We this is the history of of of all kinds of struggles.

You need songs, you need music.

Music was so present that these protests and songs like Philando Chiles, it really became the anthem of the summer from the moment they released it.

It was being played everywhere in the streets.

It was launched on YouTube, not on any other kind of more traditional streaming service.

And that's because YouTube is one of the most important ways that people across the Americas get music and also it's free.

You don't have to subscribe.

You just hit play.

And everyone across Puerto Rico was hitting play.

The protests were blasting it.

There's the imagery of all of them on the back of this truck with giant like subwoofer speakers.

They're blasting off Philando Cheetos.

So it's really important, I think, for the kind of broader morale that there were these people who are, you know, internationally known figure saying this is way more important than my tour.

I'm here with my people.

Ricardo Rosario resigns in 2019.

Vanessa, then Wanda Vasquez Garcia and, Pedro Bear Luis.

See?

They succeed him.

They're from the same party as Rosario.

The new Progressive Party.

But Bad Bunny also got beef with them, right?

So why might people still not be pleased with the political situation in Puerto Rico in 2019, 2020, all the way up to now?

Well, I think, you know, unfortunately, right there was the massive triumph of what it feels like for a people to literally eject a political leader, right?

Like, I think there was this massive moment of empowerment.

But I was at the protest the day after he stepped down.

And in those moments, the protests were still happening because people were saying, no, not one.

That not Rivera chats is a, you know, another figurehead.

They're not Pierluisi.

No one from that party that benefited the Statehood Party.

They were very adamant that they would not settle for anything else.

And unfortunately, that, you know, there wasn't a reelection, there was an insertion of another person from the party to take that person's place.

And so I think it was kind of like, you know, this bittersweet ending to this massively triumphant moment.

And I think we see the continued effects of that now.

Right?

Like in the book, we talk about the 2024 elections, where we saw a huge shift that I think had very much to do with what happened in the summer of 2019 and following that, which is that the independence candidate, Juan Dalman, who Bad Bunny advocated for, performed at the closing campaign event, came in second, got about 30% of the vote.

This is massive in the context of Puerto Rican history.

This is a place where talking about independence having a flag was literally outlawed.

It was it was a crime to talk about independence.

And in 2024, we had, you know, about a third of the population voting for the independence candidate, taking the Commonwealth Party, which is basically like advocating for the same for status quo.

They lost.

Right?

So there has been so much political activism and shift since that summer.

And and that's because of this dissatisfaction with the continuation of the same.

As I talked to these ladies, they're on a book, tour, for the, pay for NRA, book and, even going to Spain for it as well.

How's that going?

Any talk of a follow up while you guys are out there?

Just, take me on tour with you.

Tell me about it.

I mean, I think it's been amazing.

We did just come back from Spain.

So the book it's important to note, is available in English and in Spanish.

Yes.

It's available in Puerto Rico, in the United States now.

In Spain.

It's been really great to share the book with everyone.

I think there's a couple of things that really strike me kind of, you know, we wrote this book about Bad Bunny, but it's really about Puerto Rico and Puerto Rican history and, and what Puerto Rico is facing now.

And it's been really amazing to see people read the book, engage with the book, and embrace that aspect of it.

And learn so much about this place that so many of us love.

It's also been really fascinating to see people from other places who really relate.

And I think this, this relates to a question we often get about, like, why is Bad Bunny so famous?

Or why is he so popular worldwide when he talks about such very specific things?

And what we've learned is that we need people from all over the place who are unfortunately relating to these messages around gentrification, around displacement.

Right.

Around the need to hold on tight and preserve our culture coming from other countries.

Right.

And I think it's been really neat to see how people can, like, interact with the book from these different positions and take what they need out of it.

That's that's been my favorite part, for sure.

You've been listening to Vanessa Diaz and Petra Rivera-Rideau, coauthors of Pay and Eddie How Bad Bunny became the global voice of Puerto Rican resistance.

This is The Wheelhouse.

I'm Frankie Graziano.

Learn more about the book or how to hear it in Spanish at pfknrbook.com Thank you so much for your time today, Vanessa and Petra.

Thank you guys.

So glad to have you guys on.

Thank you so much.

After the break, we're going to talk to Rachel Iacovone, Puerto Rican communities reporter at Connecticut Public.

Don't go anywhere.

You're listening to The Wheelhouse on Connecticut Public.

This is The Wheelhouse from Connecticut Public Radio.

I'm Frankie Graziano.

Today we're talking about music and politics on the archipelago of Puerto Rico.

We just spoke with the authors of Pale Skin.

Eddie, how bad Bunny became the global voice of Puerto Rican resistance.

Now we're going to have a Connecticut voice continue our discussion.

Also joining us now, proud Puerto Rican.

Yeah.

Proud Puerto Rican.

Yeah.

Rachel Iacovone, Puerto Rican community reporter for Connecticut Public.

Rachel, welcome back to The Wheelhouse.

Thanks for having me.

So happy to have you on as I mentioned, Europe, Puerto Rican.

Yeah.

Also a big Bad Bunny fan.

Can we get your take on the book we just discussed and how the colonization of Puerto Rico has influenced the artist, and maybe how you told the one of your colleagues at Connecticut Public that maybe they should purchase the audio book because they infamously can't read?

Now, I was going to let you live, Frankie, but yeah, I was I became clearly I was proselytizing this text.

I have been reading, you know, so many history books and separately, some like music history books.

You know, I last love the Nashville and we did a lot of music things.

And I came here and immediately read, there is even this book Made in New York, go right about the history of Fania Records.

And I thought the intro to that one was so funny because she says, oh, my sister read it, and she notes that this is the only time someone was able to make music so boring, and I was a little worried.

I really liked that book, but it definitely read as a textbook.

So I was going into this one.

Having been on the show with Petra before, I was like, okay, this is probably what it's going to be.

It's going to be a very hard, like music business book.

And instead, I mean, it was this wonderful mix.

I really was preaching it to you because I felt like it was a really great music for sure.

History book, but also just a history of the island and modern context.

We don't really have contemporary books about history, especially after Maria.

There's a few economic books about what happened, but it's like, you know, it definitely dives into Bad Bunny's young childhood, but it's really about his career.

And that's so much ties into everything that's happened since the storm.

What the island looks like now and it's hard to write a book about that.

And it's not just Bad Bunny.

I mean, Menudo fans are going to be happy.

Ricky Martin's in there.

Residente de la ghetto.

Raul.

Andro.

Much of the conversation we've had so far comes before this year's Super Bowl, before Bad Bunny shines its brightest star to many on the mainland.

What do you think about his current influence on culture and politics?

I mean, that's a big question.

Right?

You're going to answer, gosh, it's it's grown so much like I think about us having this conversation a year ago is before the book was published, shows before the Super Bowl was even announced.

You know.

It was before the class started getting taught at Yale.

Yeah.

It was like our news peg at the time was like, oh, yeah, there's there's another bad bunny class.

And, you know, Albert Laguna, the professor at Yale, was great about saying like, no better.

I thought at first, you know, and there's been other professors since then, but even then, his course material has had to change.

So much.

Right.

He was already this gigantic artist like you're talking about.

The view count right on YouTube is always in the hundreds of millions, which is larger than yes, the U.S.

population.

And we are seeing even more of a growth, I would say, even for Abbott, because I know a lot of people who are just inspired to, like, really dive deep and dig into their own Spanish speaking skills.

You know, the joke before the Super Bowl is like, okay, you have three months to learn Spanish, but there are a lot of people who are the what we call like, no sable kids.

For those who don't speak Spanish, that means like, I don't know.

And it's also sad, wrong.

The conjugation is wrong.

So it's like a double like, no, no, Szabo, you know, kind of thing.

So the people are worried about being the like second gen, third gen and being, you know, clocked as Latino all the time, but not being able to communicate in our original language.

And they're like, I have no excuse anymore.

You know, my friends are learning this to listen to this music.

And on the global scale, we're about to get this huge performance.

I need to be able to sing word for word.

So just in my coverage, I've I've seen a lot more like language acquisition doubling down.

And I would say it's largely influenced by his rise.

So you're saying that's after the Super Bowl.

You're saying that there's in the.

Lead up, maybe after the announcement.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And and then of course not everybody's on board.

We know that they made a, an alternative, halftime show that, the numbers will say not a lot of people watched.

I'll say it that way.

But so there's that.

So he does seemingly creep into the mainland, mainstream US consciousness, maybe a little more.

Yeah, he's already a superstar at that point.

Yeah.

You're right.

I mean, we got a lot of blowback, right?

Like, I also just did like a where's a watch party list.

And there are many here in Connecticut when our population is 8% Puerto Rican.

And that's, undercount is what UConn's center says.

So probably even more than that.

And it's a very Puerto Rican area.

But, you know, in other places I've lived have not been that way.

Right.

And, Tennessee in my area of Florida was not super Puerto Rican.

There are allegedly more Puerto Ricans in Orlando now than there are on the island post-storm.

But that's what I'm saying.

Like, things have shifted so much because of that.

And around the 2020 census, this is not official, but I had a lot of anecdotal information of people going back and forth, going back and forth.

So you wonder what it's going to be like in 2030 because, now, now more people might be on there or might not, but you wonder on that point.

But last year we did have Professor Albert Laguna on from, Yale on the program to talk about his course called Bad Bunny Musical Esthetics and Politics.

What have you been hearing about the course?

Did you made me sit in for a class or something like that?

I went to his office just before he was going to teach.

Like the I think it was their midterm, you know, exam.

So I didn't want to barge in and take the test.

But I did speak to his students afterward.

With the microphone.

Yeah.

I be like, hey, how are you feeling right now?

Actually, they had just read that kind of heavier, book I was mentioning made an audio record.

Right.

So a lot of Albert's, like, seminal texts for it were stretching way further back.

A lot of people want to center Bad Bunny's experience on current reggaeton or Latin trap.

But as you saw with the latest album, as we talked about even last year, so much of it is influenced by Salsa and Bomb by Molina.

And like these older put it that way.

Genres that I would say are the basis though, of these modern things, right?

They wouldn't exist in some ways without each other.

It has made people go back to what we call like the Saturday cleaning music that their parents were listening to that came up with some of his students who I think didn't maybe appreciate as much what they were experiencing when they were kids.

And they're like, oh yeah, this is the the basis of everything I enjoy now.

Right.

One of them was Hector Miranda Plaza, who I had, like, talk to.

You kind of been a mainstay in it because he was one of the listeners from the time that Bad Bunny was out on SoundCloud.

You know, everyone jokes about the SoundCloud rapper you went to high school with.

If you're like Zolani or like I am, and, you know, most of the time they don't take off.

So, in this case, you know, Bad Bunny, obviously here we are now, right?

I also like ran my high school, SoundCloud rapper also took off those Dominic Fike.

So, shout out to SoundCloud for this generations of music and Fruity Loops.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, that program comes up so much in the book, it's so interesting because it was like GarageBand that, I grew up with.

But, you know, you listen to these things, you're like, oh, this is fun.

Not ever expecting to see that artist in person.

And the student has seen him multiple times now.

And, you know, those shows heard at what, $20, you know, and then it increases.

And the students from the island, which is, I think, a unique experience to a lot of Albert's students, were in the diaspora like I was growing up.

And, you know, we just go back to the island, visit family.

But he is from right outside of San Juan, in a more affluent area than where Bad Bunny, who is the same distance, technically of like suburb, but his upbringing is so different and they're only, what, six years?

Probably apart in age.

But you have a wealth disparity and you also have access, especially educational access.

You know, he was able to go to a private school, had, parents who had their masters, if not their PhD, for their programs.

And that's not what Bad Bunny's experience was just a few years before.

And right around the corner, you know.

Yeah.

And Hector's at Yale, but nonetheless, it's, really great to hear that you covered the class and that you were able to share that perspective.

The Bad Bunny book from Petra and Vanessa.

It's about using Bad Bunny as a hook to teach kids about Puerto Rico and its history.

Albert's sort of in this group of professors, as you mentioned, that are connecting the musical artists to Latino, Latino culture and history, the Bad Bunny syllabus.

We know that with, with Petra and Vanessa as well.

So there's just so much work happening.

How do you see that landing with students?

I mean, I think.

Is it like people like knocking down the door to take the class?

Yeah, I'd say like for the ones that took the class, I'd say it's super inspirational.

Like it's representation, right?

Is not just like, oh, this is a really big Latin artist.

There has been times where people have ignored really large artists because they don't really respect the genre.

We see that with, like Kendrick Lamar, for example.

You know, until he won a Pulitzer was not really the basis of a lot of class curriculums.

I could talk about that for, you know, classism, racism, ethnicity.

But in this case, he is such a large Latin trap artist.

And in this moment, it's not reflective of, oh, yeah, we ignored him all this time.

It's his star was still rising as these professors, including Petra and Albert, these others around the country were like, we need to ride this wave as it's happening.

And it really does coincide in the book as well with what was happening on the island.

It's a really great way to learn history, even when you're in the diaspora as it's happening.

You know, we often talk about journalists being like the contemporary historians, like we're telling history from yesterday all the time, and you can expect the average population to know that all the time.

If you're a student studying something else, engineering, for example, you're not maybe keeping up with the Spanish speaking outlets on the island or, you know, beats like mine here.

You are probably not as in touch as you are.

After taking this class.

We talked a lot about, he him bad bunny men on this show, ironically about women incorporating feminism or incorporating feminism and gender politics into their music.

What can you say about women and how they're engaging in the Bad Bunny discourse?

Yeah, I mean, of course, I think a lot of people just immediately associate it with, like, his Calvin Klein, you know, ads and all the women in the comments immediately.

Right.

But I think there's someone there's something much deeper about this than the, like, thirst for Bad Bunny online.

And, you know, at the time he came up, he was like Daddy Yankee or something, like people were just like, oh, he's cool.

And then he started to really become more of an activist.

In particular.

He has taken such a stance.

I would say, on like, queer women's rights.

He's involved like young Nico.

Another, she said Puerto Rican.

Yeah to reggaeton Anna and like a little bit more in the pop space as well.

And she's openly a lesbian and, you know, is putting out this music that is for the first time, I would say, like really on the global scale, using the like she her equivalent in Spanish when talking about a love interest.

People have gotten away with it for the longest time.

You know, like we mentioned Ricky Martin, who is now out, but he was able to talk about a love life by using more the second person by saying you about a love interest.

And then people are like, oh, if I look back, you know, a lot of his music was maybe clearly about men.

So he has done that.

And of course, on Jimmy Fallon that came up as well.

He was also wearing a shirt that was translated, said, like they killed Alexa, not a man in a skirt.

And that was about like, even as people have come around about a lot of LGBT issues, they have not necessarily come around on trans rights issues.

So that was a really big stance to us particular at the time.

This was in February of 2020.

So right before the pandemic, right before a lot of the racial justice talks as well later and I would say he's not perfect.

He's still in a genre that is certainly not, feminist all the time.

But those lyrics have also lessened over time.

If you've been a a long time fan, you will notice that you know, he increases these like, feminist songs from a female perspective and is kind of gender bending himself.

And then over time, you get to his latest album is much more reflective and about himself, about heartbreak, and is not really doing the club scene type of talk about women in objectification that people have criticized the genre for, for, you know, decades now.

You've been listening to Rachel Iacovone.

You can keep up with her reporting on Puerto Rican communities at CTPublic.org.

Thank you so much for joining us today.

So good to talk to you and thank you for the inspo.

That's it for today's show.

It was produced by Chloe Wynn and edited by Patrick Skahill.

Technical producer is Eugene Amatruda.

Thank you to everybody else at Connecticut Public that helped us put together this bad bunny 2.0 conversation.

Download The Wheelhouse anytime on your favorite podcast app.

I'm Frankie Graziano, this is The Wheelhouse.

Thank you for listening.