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What Bad Bunny’s Chart-Topping Salsa Tracks Mean for Latin Music

BBG News

Bad Bunny’s album Debí Tirar Más Fotos achieved an impressive milestone by topping Billboard’s Top Streaming Albums chart in its debut week, matching his already illustrious career. The Puerto Rican sensation is a three-time Grammy winner and the most-streamed Spotify artist for three consecutive years, starting from 2020. His latest tour, 2024 Most-Wanted, sold out, and now, the unexpected streaming sensation of his new album might be the hit track “Baile Inolvidable,” a salsa song that climbed to the top of the U.S. Apple Music chart recently.

The accomplishment is impressive considering that salsa’s heyday was in the late ’60s, characterized by icons like Celia Cruz and Willie Colón who solidified the genre as a cornerstone of Latin culture. As University of Pennsylvania professor Jairo Moreno explains, “The history and tale of salsa is one of rise and potential fall, but it has never ceased to exist.” Bad Bunny’s album has brought salsa back into prominence, offering an expansion of the genre and providing Latin Americans with a chance to rediscover, or even be reminded of, their heritage.

According to Bruce McIntosh, vice president of Craft Recordings Latin catalog, it’s extremely beneficial for the overall landscape of Latin music when modern artists reconnect with their musical origins and flourish. Notably, Craft Recordings owns Fania Records, a label founded by Dominican composer Johnny Pacheco and American attorney Jerry Masucci, which is renowned for creating salsa and boasting legends like Ray Barretto and Bobby Valentín. McIntosh believes this trend is particularly encouraging because it’s being embraced by a diverse age group and demographic, keeping the genre vibrant despite its shrinking commercial appeal in some circles.

Certain musicians have managed to preserve a unique musical style and achieved extraordinary fame in the process. One contemporary example is Marc Anthony, a Nuyorican artist whose song “I Need to Know” reached #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1999, demonstrating salsa’s potential. Originating from Cuba but further refined by Puerto Ricans in New York City, salsa music has been kept alive by dancers who appreciate its distinctive trombones and bongos. In the 2010s, experts claim that reggaeton became the preferred medium for Latin artists to create music, with younger generations favoring dance styles like perreo over salsa dancing.

Debí Tirar Más Fotos is not just a salsa album; instead, it’s an album showcasing Puerto Rican music according to Bad Bunny in his interview with TIME. The artist explained that the album incorporates various rhythms or purely Puerto Rican music, including reggaetones. However, Debí Tirar also expands upon the sounds that propelled him to international fame by delving into less popular genres such as jíbaro – rural Puerto Rican music – and plena. Songs with these beats have been positively received by U.S. audiences, with “Baile Inolvidable” recently being overtaken on the U.S. Apple Music chart by the album’s title track, which is inspired by plena.

Experts observe that Bad Bunny’s choice to blend these types of music on his album represents a logical progression for the artist. As Harvard University music professor Alejandro Madrid explains, “This is essentially how these artists merge the music their families used to listen to when they were young, with the music they themselves are part of as members of America’s contemporary culture.” Occasionally, when these blends occur, the pendulum may swing too far towards modern styles, but usually it returns to more traditional sounds.

In a similar vein, Madrid equates Bad Bunny with Rigo Tovar, a renowned Mexican singer who popularized cumbia beyond Colombia by blending it with contemporary rock and tropical music. Similarly, Marc Anthony initially gained fame producing hip-hop and freestyle tracks before becoming known for his salsa hits “Valió La Pena” and “Vivir Mi Vida.” Bad Bunny’s evolving musical style, which preserves traditional music while also innovating, is adding significant value to the genre among Latinos and beyond. This isn’t an isolated choice; Puerto Rican artist Rauw Alejandro’s November album, titled “Cosa Nuestra,” samples a salsa song on its opening track, reflecting the influence of Willie Colón and Héctor Lavoe’s 1969 album with the same name. Similarly, Bad Bunny draws from older classics, merging salsa with dembow in both the opening and closing tracks of his album “NuevaYol” and “La Mudanza,” and incorporating plena on “Cafe con Ron.” In doing so, Bad Bunny stimulates discussions about a shared history. As Moreno notes, “Salsa… solidified itself in the ’70s as one of the most significant musical cultural contributions of Puerto Ricans to the world, to the United States, to Latin America, but that music was indebted to plena, jíbaro music, bomba music, and aguinaldos.

The victory of Debí Tirar certainly seizes a significant trend within the music industry. As per a 2024 report by Luminate, Latin music has been identified as the fastest-growing genre in the United States. This growth can be attributed to global sensations like Shakira and Luis Fonsi. However, these artists have had to adapt to the dominance of monolingualism within the industry by releasing songs in English or collaborating with well-known English-speaking superstars such as Justin Bieber on Fonsi’s hit “Despacito,” or Shakira and Beyoncé’s “Beautiful Liar.” However, Bad Bunny’s exclusively Spanish-language tunes demonstrate that language is no longer an obstacle to success in the music charts, according to Leila Cobo, Billboard’s chief content officer for Latin/Español. This is further evidence that listeners are open and enthusiastic about exploring music in Spanish across various genres.

Not only does Debí Tirar receive widespread praise and fan support, but achieving this is no simple task. This album emerges at a specific juncture in history characterized by a hostile stance from the new U.S. President towards immigrants, particularly Latinos, and during a period when Puerto Rico grapples with a variety of issues including gentrification and power outages. McIntosh suggests that this music holds significant importance for people’s identities, much like the emergence of Fania Records did in the 60’s and 70’s in NYC. He notes that creating salsa and plena tracks is part of a long-standing tradition of protest within the genre. Experts also point out that while salsa romantica gained popularity in the late 1980s, albums like Willie Colón and Rubén Blades’ Siembra, similarly used salsa as a platform to voice their community’s struggles.

For certain audiences, the song “Debí Tirar” embodies Puerto Rican pride through its selection of collaborators, musical instruments, and album artwork, serving as a symbolic acceptance of Latin culture. Estefania Pessoa, a first-generation American and well-known content creator on the internet under the name Tefi, expressed her feelings about the album in a popular TikTok video, stating that it facilitated her introspection regarding her personal connection to her identity.

In an interview with TIME, she expresses that the success of her album holds a unique significance due to its blend of songs appealing to various generations and its distinctive style. “It can be challenging to convey to others what culture signifies to you, how vital it is, how deeply rooted it is in me,” she explains. “Hearing it was a heartfelt reminder for me to cherish my roots and appreciate the people I originate from.

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2025-01-15 01:06

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