The growing genre moving from loudspeakers to headphones
Fans of the NFL were shook to wake up to a Super Bowl performance announcement last September that’s as far from American football as European football.
Bad Bunny’s halftime show special was announced with what is now the most-liked Super Bowl performance teaser of all time. His music sings for liberation from oppression, and invokes a modern twist on a long-overlooked genre.
The Puerto Rican pop sensation brought his native island’s salsa to the charts, bringing along a comeback for the genre that no one saw coming. Forever the music of abuelas, it seemed quite far from modern audiences until artists like Rauw Alejandro and Luis Vázquez started to revamp it for the dancers of today, proving that salsa music is naturally lively, catchy, and inviting to dance to, with its contagious rhythms and melancholic vocals.
The surging trend has been perceptible far beyond Latin American nations. According to Spotify’s newsroom data, salsa streams grew more than 140% over the past five years, “with US consumption nearly doubling”, and moreover, listeners aged 18 to 24 are now the second-largest demographic streaming salsa worldwide”. While the sudden upsurge is free of age and geographical constraints, it’s impossible to assume that all listeners are blasting it like they used to.
Last year, the sleepy Californian town of Bell Gardens had planned a Fourth of July party in a local park, with games, food vendors, and a Latin music band to play salsa. Since 96% of its residents are Hispanic Americans, and in light of immigration raids by ICE agents becoming daily occurrences in Southern California, the mayor of Bell Gardens thought twice about the party, which had been a tradition in the mostly residential town for 30 years.
Eventually, Jorgel Chavez cancelled the event, telling the New York Times, “The last thing I want is for ICE or any of these federal agencies to come into the event and pick up my residents”.
The soundtrack to a whole people’s sorrow and longing had turned into a target on their backs. Bad Bunny famously refused to add any US dates onto his Debí Tirar Más Fotos World Tour out of concern for the country’s increasingly aggressive deportation policies, since a large majority of his audiences are Hispanic.
“I’ve performed there many times. All [the shows] have been successful. All of them have been magnificent,” he said candidly to I-D magazine in September, “But there was the issue of, like, fucking ICE could be outside [my concert].”
The reggaetonero still performed at the Super Bowl’s halftime show, however, making history as the first solo male Latin artist to perform during the much-coveted slot—and what a show it was. Maga’s outraged response to the announcement of a Latin American’s performance was to threaten to send ICE agents to the California stadium where the NFL final will take place, confirming the fears that had fuelled his touring choices.
The performance delivered on the trailer’s promise “the world will dance”, as salseros from all racial backgrounds joined together in a world that could be, united by salsa. The genre’s most beloved classics have been making a comeback all over Europe, the US and beyond, and politics could only be fuelling the fire, so here are a few tracks to get you started.
Spotify’s most listened to hits:
- ‘BAILE INoLVIDABLE’ – Bad Bunny
- ‘Lloraras’ – Dimensión Latina and Oscar D’León
- ‘Una Vida Pasada’ – Camilo and Carin Leon
- ‘Virgen’ – Adolescent’s Orquesta
- ‘Tu Con El’ – Frankie Ruiz
A few of Far Out’s favourites:
- ‘Deseandote’ – Frankie Ruiz
- ‘Ven devórame otra vez’ – Lalo Rodríguez
- ‘La Cura’ – Frankie Ruiz
- ‘El día de mi suerte’ – Héctor Lavoe and Willie Colón
- ‘Me Hace Daño Verte’ – Resto
