By now, even people who don’t listen to rap, Latin trap, or reggaeton have likely heard of reggaetonero Bad Bunny, the stage name of Puerto Rican singer, musician, and producer Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio. His music has gone global, he has topped Spotify worldwide streaming records for three years in a row, and won numerous awards—including Sunday’s Best Música Urbana Album Grammy win, for Un Verano Sin Ti.
Bad Bunny opened the Grammys telecast with a rousing entrance; Pitchfork reports that he “led a troupe of dancers, some wearing papier-mâché heads and colorful skirts.” Much of the U.S. entertainment coverage went a similar route as Pitchfork. But Spanish-language media, especially in Puerto Rico, as well as Puerto Rican journalists and social media commenters here in the States, were aware of and talked about the sociocultural significance of not only Bad Bunny’s performance, but also the meaning and impact of his music.
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I want to post Bad Bunny’s entire performance here, including his powerful entrance—but the Recording Academy’s YouTube page has yet to upload it, and most videos posted by others have been removed due to copyright violations.
As of this writing, this video from Twitter user Leon Carrington is the best we’ve got.
Sadly, in my opinion, most of the clips of Bad Bunny’s performance, and far too many of the stories about it, were centered on Taylor Swift getting up and dancing, rather than actual descriptions and the cultural significance of what he was presenting.
Just one example:
But I digress. Bad Bunny’s performance was also close-captioned as “Speaking non-English, singing in non-English.” It’s also worth noting here that he only sings in Spanish and always has. “I believed from the beginning that I could become great, that I could become one of the biggest stars in the world without having to change my culture, my language, my jargon,” he said in an MTV VMA acceptance speech last summer.
Dr. Yarimar Bonilla, director of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies in New York City, called it out.
This centering of English during a highly rehearsed Spanish-language performance, where lyrics were certainly available ahead of time, was addressed by journalist Susanne Ramirez de Arellano in an opinion piece for Latino Rebels. Thankfully, she opens with an actual description of what was taking place, and its meaning.
Benito opened the show —or the “gringo Grammy,” as he calls it— with a percussion blast of plena, a unique Puerto Rican concoction of Latin American and African musical traditions used by Boricuas to communicate and critique society. It is a powerful symbol of Puerto Rican culture.
His first salvo was the song “El Apagón” —“Puerto Rico está bien cabrón!“— which tells the story of an island in darkness and Boricuas fighting gentrification and colonization. “Yo no me quiero ir de aquí,” the song says—I don’t want to leave from here. “Que se vayan ellos.”
The cabezudos, used in cultural presentations, were the second salvo. The giant paper-mache heads brought the spirit of the Fiestas de la Calle San Sebastian to the Grammys, depicting Puerto Rican icons like the independentista poet Julia de Burgos, rapper Tego Calderón, composer and salsa singer Ismael Rivera, poet Lola Rodríguez de Tió, and baseball legend Roberto Clemente.
This was all lost on CBS, the network broadcasting the event, which was caught unaware —didn’t they rehearse?— or didn’t understand what language Bad Bunny sang and spoke in. So they decided to caption it with: “speaking non-English, singing in non-English.”
Writing for The Atlantic, author Xochitl Gonzalez published “Bad Bunny Overthrows the Grammys: “He didn’t win Best Album, and I don’t care.” Gonzalez offers even more analysis of the cultural significance of the performance.
Bad Bunny began his performance last night with a bomba beat—the opening of his own song “El Apagón,” which samples Ismael Rivera’s “Controversia.” The women who flanked him in his entrance—many of them Afro-Latinas—wore traditional skirts and danced the plena. Trailing them were dancers in cabezudos—giant papier-mâché heads—in the likenesses of Puerto Rican icons and independence advocates including the poet Julia de Burgos and the reggaeton pioneer and anti-corruption advocate Tego Calderón.
The curtain then opened on the Dominican artist Dahian El Apechao and his band, as the medley shifted to “Después de la Playa.” The song is a riff on merengue. Some say the beat of merengue was inspired by the rhythm of enslaved people cutting cane while their legs were chained together. Others say it was inspired by an injury sustained by a hero of the Dominican revolution: Everyone danced with a limp in his honor.
While the Dominican Republic successfully fought the Spanish for its freedom and Cuba was liberated, independence was denied to the people of Boriken. Not for lack of trying—in 1868, an uprising known as El Grito de Lares failed. That year the poet and feminist Lola Rodríguez de Tió wrote the lyrics to “La Borinqueña,” which became an anthem for pro-independence Puerto Ricans and landed her in exile. It was one of the many songs that the United States later outlawed, with a gag law in place from 1948 to 1957. Puerto Ricans had U.S. citizenship but could still be stripped of their First Amendment rights. Music, the colonizer realized, could be dangerous.
The “paper mâche heads,” as described in some of legacy media stories, are called cabezudos in Spanish, and made an important statement. The were crafted and worn by members of the Puerto Rican arts collective Agua Sol y Sereno.
As Erica González Martínez, the director of #Power4PuertoRico, noted when she tweeted an image of the cabuzedos:
Translation of image caption:
At the Grammys, Bad Bunny opted for representation of Puerto Rican culture, including cabezudos that honor the contribution of Puerto Ricans in culture, arts, music, and sports.
And El Nuevo Día reporter Shakira Vargas shared photos of the people beneath the “big heads.”
Translation:
Bad Bunny opted for a representation of Puerto Rican culture by recognizing and including the cabezudos of the Puerto Rican collective Agua, Sol y Sereno at the opening of the Grammys.
These are the historical figures who were represented: Ismael Rivera, Andy Montañez, Tite Curet Alonso, Tego Calderón, Roberto Clemente, Lola Rodríguez de Tió, Julia de Burgos, and Felisa Rincón de Gautier.
My guess? Most non-Puerto Rican viewers would only recognize Roberto Clemente.
In January, NPR’s Code Switch featured a discussion with Loyola Marymount University Chicanx and Latinx Studies professor Dr. Vanessa Diaz on Bad Bunny’s political impact.
Give it a listen:
As noted on NPR’s site:
Bad Bunny, the genre- and gender norm-defying Puerto Rican rapper, is one of the biggest music stars on the planet. His rise to megastardom has run parallel to — and been shaped by — Puerto Rico's political tumult and catastrophic natural disasters, and he has provided a global megaphone for Puerto Rican discontent. In this episode, we take a look at how Bad Bunny became the unlikely voice of resistance in Puerto Rico.
The full transcript can be found here. Want to learn more? Check out Dr. Diaz’s Bad Bunny Syllabus!
The Bad Bunny Syllabus explores the cultural significance of Bad Bunny as a way to draw folks in to the complex, dynamic historical and contemporary realities of Puerto Rico. Bad Bunny’s rise as a global star, breaking innumerable records for streaming, tour ticket sales, and more, has coincided with his increased attention to Puerto Rican politics. His dedication to centering Puerto Rico in his lyrics and music videos, his crossover success while singing only in Spanish, and his engagement with social issues in Puerto Rico like gentrification and LGBTQ rights make him a unique artistic focus for analyzing these matters. Bad Bunny and his music have also become part of the voice of the generation of Puerto Ricans who have been acutely impacted by recent environmental and economic crises on the island, which are directly related to Puerto Rico’s colonial status.
You can also learn from the course on Twitter.
Join me in the comments for more discussion of Bad Bunny and current issues for Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans, as well as the weekly Caribbean News Roundup.
