--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Welcome to Today Explained. I'm Sean Rameswaram here with my guest Jorel Melendez Badillo, author of Puerto Rico and National History, and also a Bad Bunny collaborator.
--:-- Jorel Melendez Badillo: Thanks for having me on the show.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Last December, you were on vacation with your family in Portugal. You had left your computer behind and you were contacted via Instagram message from someone in Benito's team saying that they were working with Bad Bunny. They were interested in knowing if you were interested in having a conversation about a potential collaboration with Benito.
--:-- Jorel Melendez Badillo: My heart dropped, as you can imagine. They sent an NDA, an undisclosure agreement. But wait, you had to say no because you're on vacation with your family in Portugal, right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: [laughs] Exactly. Yeah, no, but your family understood. They're all Bad Bunny fans. You also have an altar, a shrine for Bad Bunny in your house.
--:-- Jorel Melendez Badillo: And so I had to say yes. Five minutes after we were on the phone and they were telling me that Benito was going to drop a new record in a few weeks. They talked about the sensibilities of the record, how it was an homage to Puerto Rican culture, how history was going to be central to the album's narrative.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So they were interested in incorporating Puerto Rican history into the visualizers.
--:-- Jorel Melendez Badillo: Yes. Visualizers are the ways that artists monetize in YouTube. And so each one of the 17 songs in the record has a historical narrative that goes all the way from pre-Columbian history to the current political and social moment in Puerto Rico.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Tell us about this history.
--:-- Jorel Melendez Badillo: So Benito wanted for me to write about the general history of Puerto Rico. But he was also very adamant that there were certain things that he wanted to include, like for example the history of surveillance and repression in Puerto Rico throughout the 20th century, the history of colonial governance in Puerto Rico, the history of la plena bomba which are two Afro-Caribbean rhythms and how it influenced reggaeton.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In addition to the visualizer videos, you also collaborated with Benito in the residency in Puerto Rico. The team wanted you to write about 40 historical texts of Puerto Rican history and Puerto Rican culture itself.
--:-- Jorel Melendez Badillo: So it was an opportunity for me to highlight certain things that don't usually get mentioned in Puerto Rican history, punk bands, Tito Trinidad, our boxer. And the record for Felix Tito Trinidad, well known to most boxing followers. Our basketball team and how they beat the U.S. Dream Team in Athens in 2004. They were called the Dream Team, but now some people are calling them the Cream Team.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: For you, what was it like to see your work not only in Benito's visualizers, but also to be part of the residency in Puerto Rico, which is a historic residency?
--:-- Jorel Melendez Badillo: When this album came out, I remember streaming it all weekend that first weekend and feeling like, oh, wow, this is this like incredible, comprehensive survey of like the history of Puerto Rican music. You can just tell that from all the genres that are incorporated into the album.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But I know nothing, zero, about the history of Puerto Rican music. How did it feel to someone like you who's like dedicated their life to this?
--:-- Jorel Melendez Badillo: You know, I became an academic and a scholar, the first in my family, because I wanted to take these knowledges out of the ivory tower of academia. I wanted to democratize access to our history, to knowledge. And so it was mind-blowing to, when the record came out, January 5th at noon, just to put the YouTube visualizers and see Puerto Rican history accompanying these sounds.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The record is very political, even in the soundscape that it creates. Mixing plena, salsa, all these sort of Caribbean rhythms.
--:-- Jorel Melendez Badillo: It was mind-blowing. You know, Benito did not have to do this. He could have kept talking about expensive cars, you know, his life in Monaco, flying in private jets. Dating a Jenner.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Dating a Jenner. That was a, yeah, that was a tragic moment in his career.
--:-- Jorel Melendez Badillo: A lot of, in Puerto Rico, you know, Benito's like that primo, that cousin that made it. And that, you know, cousins sometimes do things that you do not agree with, but you still love him. And he spent time in L.A., but then he came back to Puerto Rico.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I think he's also, there's something about being, you know, in diaspora, in exile, about connecting with your roots and your identities. And I think that this record is sort of an exploration into what it means for him to be Puerto Rican.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Here's my next question. Do people in Puerto Rico look to Bad Bunny to actually affect change? Or are they happy enough with what he's done, which is put them on the map in a way that they weren't on it before? Or constantly bringing himself and his music and his message back to the island?
--:-- Jorel Melendez Badillo: Absolutely. I think that everyone in Puerto Rico is in love with Bad Bunny at the moment. Even my grandmother, he used to say that he was malhablao. He was always swearing and she disliked him. Now she sings his songs.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I think that people are happy, but I think that more importantly, there is a generation that has been coined as the crisis generation, which Benito is part of. You know, that generation that the only thing that they know is crisis, that those kids that were born in the late 90s, early 2000s, you know, they went through the fiscal crisis that began in 2006, austerity measures, the implementation of an undemocratic fiscal oversight board by the U.S. government in 2015, school closings. Hurricane Maria, we had an earthquake swarm. You know, we lose power on an almost daily basis, corruption, etc.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So the only thing that this generation knows is crisis. And I think that that generation is becoming politicized even more and more. In the last election cycle, it was the first time in Puerto Rico's modern history since the 40s and 50s that the pro-independence party got to second place. A party that was supported by Benito publicly. And Benito was there at their closing event.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So people are happy. People love Benito. But also I think that Benito represents a generation that feels disenfranchised and that is becoming more politicized. And so I think we needed an artist in the mainstream to amplify the conversations that are happening around colonialism, displacement, and crisis in Puerto Rico.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: One last question before we go. Both you and our previous guest, both Puerto Ricans, refer to Bad Bunny, the artist known as Bad Bunny, as Benito. Does everyone just call him Benito on the island?
--:-- Jorel Melendez Badillo: Yeah, Benito. I think it's a term of endearment. Benito, you know, you dated a janitor. We still love you. When we go to that residency or when we've been in the residency, we're not only celebrating Benito, but it feels as we're celebrating ourselves. And so that's why we are so happy to see him succeed.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so, yeah, I think it's a term of endearment. Benito.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Jorel Melendez Badillo is an associate professor of Latin American and Caribbean history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Avishay Artsy produced today's show. Amina Al-Sadi edited. Laura Bullard checked the facts. And Patrick Boyd was on the ones and twos. The rest of La Familia includes La Jefa, Miranda Kennedy, La Reina, Noelle Ray, Jolie Myers, Peter Balanon-Rosen, Gabrielle Burbay, Miles Bryan, Harim Wawagdi, Andrea Kristen's daughter, Devin Schwartz, Denise Guerra, and Rebecca Ibarra.
