The Department of Music’s Walter W. Naumburg Professor of Music Alejandro L. Madrid was recently interviewed by TIME Magazine as an expert commentator for the article “What Bad Bunny’s Chart-Topping Salsa Tracks Mean for Latin Music.”
Excerpt:
Experts note that Bad Bunny’s decision to incorporate these genres of music on the album is a natural evolution for the artist. “It’s a way for these artists to somehow blend the music that their family was listening to when they were growing up, and the music that they were also listening to as part of the younger generation of American culture,” says Harvard University professor of music Alejandro Madrid. “When you have these fusions, sometimes the pendulum goes a little bit too much into the most contemporary styles, and often it swings back to more of the traditional sounds.”
Madrid compares Bad Bunny to Rigo Tovar, a Mexican singer credited for popularizing cumbia beyond Colombia by mixing it with modern rock and música tropical. Marc Anthony also started his career making hip-hop and freestyle tracks before being recognized for the popular salsa songs “Valió La Pena,” and “Vivir Mi Vida.” Bad Bunny’s evolving sound, which has expanded to continue the traditional music of the past, is thus adding value to the genre among Latinos and beyond. It’s a notable decision that Bad Bunny is not alone in. Puerto Rican artist Rauw Alejandro’s November album, Cosa Nuestra, a name borrowed from Willie Colón and Héctor Lavoe’s 1969 album, samples the salsa song “Qué Lío” on the opening track. Bad Bunny similarly borrows from older classics, mixing salsa with dembow on both the opening and closing tracks of the album “NuevaYol” and “La Mudanza,” and sprinkling in plena on “Cafe con Ron.” In doing so, Bad Bunny is evoking conversation around a shared history. “Salsa… consolidated itself in the ‘70s as kind of a 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, to jíbaro music, to bomba music into aguinaldos,” says Moreno.