I’m sure most of you would recognise Latin music when you hear it, even though you might have trouble describing it. “Sounds like salsa”, you might say before some pedant informs you, “actually this is merengue”. Terms like bossa nova and rumba float indefinably in the public consciousness, with echoes of plastic buttons on the rhythm options on cheap, 1970’s electric organs. At least for old farts like me. Maybe these days it comes as a largely ignored, free sample pack on the latest music software package. Away from the aficionados, Latin music is more those evening, dance classes you keep meaning to go to or those Zumba sessions you did one January to work off December’s cholesterol and alcohol assault.
However, on a Saturday night, several cocktails nearer sunday’s inevitable paracetamol and bacon sandwich dawn, the moment the DJ drops that Latin track you’ll be winding your butt as if your subconscious has forgotten how white you are. At least until that moment of clarity when you see a non white person doing it properly and you are divested of your illusions and sunday’s hangover just got a whole lot nearer.
Peruvians grooving in a traditional style
So, off we go to Latin America, fingers clicking to an imaginary lambada beat (actually it’s merengue) and feet moving to a mental mambo, albeit with a lack of syncopated flair. The air will surely be infused with exotic rhythms and the stirrings of ancient strands of DNA will guide your hips in sensuous gyrations, as impressed locals stand in awe.
Then you arrive.
After just over two months in Brazil, my travel pal Tom and I finally heard a piece of music that might be described as salsa, or merengue or whatever, on our very last day before crossing into Bolivia. Every previous day we had been inflicted with what is known as MPB – musica popular brasileira (Brazilian popular music) more commonly referred to as utter shite. Any hints of things Latin are smeared with an over-produced, aspartame drool of western pop blandness and dancability is engulfed by a truck load of drudgery and monotony. Leading this tide of tedium was Nao Fala Nao Pra Mim Bebe by some people known as Humberto and Ronaldo, which seemingly the Brazilian constitution demanded be played interminably in all public spaces. By week two I was ready to launch a Go Fund Me campaign to have those responsible assassinated. I was deterred only by the thought that someone would insist on playing the godforsaken garbage even more in tribute to their loving memory and distraught Brazilian teenagers would buy the hastily repackaged best of compilation, leading to yet more public airing of the atrocity in the name of music.
A Brazilian not contemplating the finer points of salsa rhythms
Once emerged from the jungles of Bolivia and throughout my travels all the way up to El Salvador I was at least spared the horror of MPB. From this point on the public expression of music meant almost, only one thing: reggaeton. It may not have much to do with reggae at all but its skipping beat is at least dancable, unlike its Brazilian cousin. I put it in the same class as Afro Beats – decent music ruined by shit auto-tune vocals.
For those not familiar with the hell that is auto tune, I can assure you that you will have heard this tiresome, cut price, toy robot, vocal effect. It may well have been justified for its novelty value back in 1998 with Believe by Cher, but 20+ years on only inspires the urge to shove fistfuls of soggy sawdust down the throats of so called vocalists who insist on using it. Producers have remained keen on it however, because, as its name suggests, it permits talentless oafs to sound as though they are singing in key, when in reality their voice is more suited to scaring off herds of wildebeest determined to chomp on farmer’s crops.
A Colombian demonstrating some less traditional dance moves
As a traveller your main format for absorbing reggaeton is videos: if there’s music coming out of a TV it’s almost certainly going to be reggaeton. If the performer is male there are in fact, essentially only two videos you will see, regardless of the artist or song being performed. The first will have the singer and his almost certainly temporary, paid for girlfriend looking lovingly into each other’s eyes while they wander aimlessly around a variety of locations. They will get into a gleaming, overpriced sports car as the man repeats some schmaltzy twaddle, with the auto-tune effect sucking out any emotion that might possibly be lurking beyond the man’s evident interest in the fast car.
The second video will be an unconvincing party scene, entirely free of anyone remotely ugly or overweight, unless they are required for demeaning, comic effect. Dancers will gyrate with sexual abandon in adoration of the video star, with only one black female permitted, who will of course be better at gyrating sexually than the rest. No indigenous people will be invited to the party.
Female artists are allowed slight variations on the above with the addition of a dash of commercially acceptable, unthreatening girl power. Sports cars are optional.
What is traditionally thought of as Latin music cloaks the language of love in sensuality over sexuality, whether expressed in lyrics or dance. Whereas reggaeton says, “drop your knickers babe, I’m going to bang you on the back seat of my expensive sports car, while my slightly jealous, champagne swigging mates cheer me on coz I’ve pulled such a sexy bitch”.
There may well be a time and a place for such behaviour, generally in the early hours of the morning in an unfashionable nightclub, under the influence of sufficient quantities of cheap alcohol to dull the judgement and resolution of consenting adults. These circumstances are far more conducive to negotiating reggaeton dancing and daubing your paws over some tight butt cheeks than executing a sublime paso doble.
Of course, if Latin music is what you really want you can find it if you’re prepared to put in a bit of effort, but don’t expect it to come to you. Otherwise, there are always worse things than having to watch videos of scantily clad, lithe young bodies cavorting in near sexual congress to simple dance rhythms while you down another cold beer.
