Stylistically, dancehall has more in common with American hip-hop than standard
Jamaican reggae. As dancehall style grew in popularity in Jamaica, it also caught
on in other parts of the Caribbean and beyond. Important Jamaican dancehall stars
are Buju Banton, Capleton, Eek-A-Mouse, Maxi Preist, Shabba Ranks, and Yel-
lowman. Both Jamaican reggae and dancehall had significant influence on popular
music styles outside the island.
The reggae and dancehall styles migrated from Jamaica and spread to the Carib-
bean at large, the United Kingdom, the United States, and various parts of Latin
America. As these styles moved further from their home, they mixed with the re-
gional styles of the diaspora. Thus, a host of reggae or dancehall-based style deri-
vations came into existence in the 1990s and beyond. Examples of these new styles
include reggaespanol, reggaetón, and reggae resistencia. Each of these derivations
on the original Jamaican styles added regional elements to create musical hybrids.
However, the principal difference between standard Jamaican reggae and these
derivations is that Jamaican reggae is performed in English (or the thick Jamaican
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patois that is based in English) and the other styles are all performed in Spanish or
Portuguese.
Reggaespañol (or reggae en español) is a style that has strongholds in Latin
and Central America, as well as in Spain. Stylistically, reggaespañol sounds like
Spanish-language Jamaican dancehall. Like dancehall, reggaespañol comes in the
conscious and slackness lyrical varieties. This type of music is largely created by
Black Latinos and rose to popularity in the early 1990s. Columbia Records released
the first collection of reggaespañol songs in 1991. This compilation included tracks
from El General, La Diva, Nardo Boom, La Atrevida, and others. Reggaespañol that
contains more conscious lyrics is produced by artists such as Chando, Jah Nattoh,
Bocer, and Guanche. A stronghold of the conscious variety is Barcelona, Spain.
Reggae resistencia is a term coined by Brazilian reggae singer Edson Gomes in
the late 1980s. The style is a combination of roots reggae and Portuguese language
lyrics. Based in Sao Paulo, Gomes writes protest lyrics that discuss politics and re-
ligion. EMI released Gomes’ album in this style in 1988 under the title Reggae re-
sistencia. Since then, Gomes has continued on the road paved by Bob Marley and
Jimmy Cliff. He remains active and has released six albums since 2000, including
a two-CD live album in 2006.
Reggaetón is the most popular of the Jamaican dancehall derivatives. The style
is also known as regueton and is a specifically urban style of Spanish-language
dancehall that became popular in Latin America in the early 1990s. The style has
subsequently become popular internationally and now hosts several superstars,
such as Daddy Yankee. More accurately, reggaetón blends elements of Jamaican
dancehall, American hip-hop, and Latin bomba , merengue , and bachata . Singers perform in Spanish and often switch mid-song between Spanish and English. Just
as Jamaican dancehall songs take their beats from preexisting songs, the character-
istic reggaetón beat came from the Shabba Ranks tune “Dem Bow.” The unofficial
home of reggaetón is Puerto Rico, but the style is popular across the Caribbean,
Latin America, and the United States. Also, like dancehall, the lyrics of reggaetón
tend to emphasize discussions of sex and the exploitation of women (standard
slackness topics).
Born in Panama, reggaetón quickly moved to Puerto Rico and was described
in the 1980s as Spanish-language dancehall. Popular early artists included Chicho
Man, Renato, and Black Apache. Once the style moved from Panama to Puerto
Rico, it acquired a hip-hop flavor from rapper Vico C and also gained greater dis-
tribution. In the 1990s, Puerto Rican reggaetón producers were moving away from
the reuse of existing backing tracks and began creating their own beats. With this,
reggaetón gained its true personality by blending dancehall toasting, hip-hop pos-
turing, and Caribbean musical styles.
The mature reggaetón style has several musically distinctive qualities. Most rec-
ognizable is the heavy emphasis on drum machine produced beats that are focused
332 | Regional
on snare drum use. The musical backdrop to a reggaetón song is largely electroni-
cally produced with the synthesizer as a main instrument. The beats employed in
reggaetón songs are often based on other popular Latin American styles such as
salsa , bachata, and merengue.
Throughout the mid-1990s, reggaetón was picking up an international audience.
Through the work of artists such as DJ Playero and DJ Nelson, the style spread
outside the Caribbean and, by the end of the decade, reggaetón was an internation-
ally marketable style. Puerto Rican-based Daddy Yankee and Dominican Republic
products Don Chezina and Luny Tunes have pushed the style into the new millen-
nium and expanded the audience into the United States. The popularity of the style
continues to grow. In 2004, American hip-hop artist N.O.R.E. created crossover
appeal for the style when he dueted with Daddy Yankee on “ Oye Mi Canto. ” This
success was amplified by Don Omar’s 2006 album King of Kings, which climbed
into the top ten on the American charts and moved to number one on the Billboard
Latin Rhythm Radio Charts.
Reggaetón’s popularity continues to grow with artists in the style, making in-
roads in American hip-hop and in the American film industry. In fact, reggaetón is
popular enough that hip-hop artists are remixing select tunes to include reggaetón
beats. Snoop Dogg and Usher have both made reggaetón remixes and the trend will
likely continue. The crossover between American hip-hop and reggaetón is now
significant. Daddy Yankee works with hip-hop producers Sean “Diddy” Combs
and Pharrell Williams from the Neptunes. Reggaetón is now considered a viable
international music style and continues to attract new listeners.
Further Reading
Manuel, Peter, Kenneth M. Bilby, and Michael D. Largey. Caribbean Currents: Carib-
bean Music from Rumba to Reggae. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2006.
Rivera, Raquel Z., Wayne Marshall, and Deborah Pacini Hernandez, eds. Reggaetón.
Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009.
Samponaro, Philip. ‘‘‘Oye mi canto’ (‘Listen to My Song’): The History and Politics of
Reggaetón.” Popular Music & Society 32, no. 4 (2009): 489–506.
David Moskowitz
Reggaetón. See Reggae .
Regional (Choro)
The regional is a Brazilian music ensemble associated with choro , the urban popular instrumental music genre that dominated the musical scene in Rio de Janeiro
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in the early part of the 20th century. Very few professional musicians were associ-
ated with the early choro, which was strongly associated with amateur musicians
of the lower middle sector of society. With the development of new entertainment
technologies—film, recordings, and radio—a new demand for popular music led
to changes
in the very nature of the choro. With the rise of these new media, choro
musicians quickly found that their skills were in demand by a larger audience,
leading to the evolution of choro from a style of playing European dance music
performed at parties and other social functions by amateur musicians, to a separate
genre of music performed by increasingly larger professional groups. From these
early groups came the regional (plural, regionais ), the professional ensemble that
became the workhorse of the entertainment industry through the 1940s.
Popular music in Brazil came to be influenced by the nascent consumer indus-
tries that developed in conjunction with new communication technologies. The
budding silent film industry in the early 1900s began to employ musicians to ac-
company films, to occupy the audience between reel changes, and to entertain the
public in the lobby before showings; choro ensembles were hired to play at these
cinemas, which used the quality and size of the groups as part of their advertising.
The result was that choro moved from an amateur event to an increasingly profes-
sional endeavor. Choro ensembles during this transitional period increased steadily
in size and complexity as the new media put higher demands on the musicians. The
result was greater technical precision and a stylistic change favoring faster, more
intricate music, and more professional musicians. As these musicians became part
of these new media, their primary audience shifted to the middle and upper classes
(in effect, those who could afford to participate in the new types of entertainment).
It is uncertain how these ensembles came to be known as conjuntos regionais,
or regional ensembles, but it is generally believed that the name came from groups
associated with the northeast region of Brazil. Before samba predominated as the
preferred Carnival genre, choro ensembles playing maxixes were commonly part of the festivities. During the 1910s, it became fashionable for these groups to dress
in the manner of rural northeasterners and assume northeastern names such as Tu-
runas Pernambucanos (The Fearless Ones from Pernambuco, a state in northeastern
Brazil). Even though they played in a thoroughly Rio de Janeiro style, they were
known as regional ensembles since these ensembles evoked the northeast region.
Over time, the northeastern associations were lost, and the name was assumed by
professional radio and recording ensembles.
The introduction and proliferation of radio also had an enormous impact on the
course of popular music as broadcasters scrambled for high-quality music to play
on the air, resulting in the formation of a large number of ensembles. By the 1930s,
the recording industry employed large numbers of solo singers and instrumental-
ists, many of whom were featured on radio broadcasts as well. Radio stations and
record companies found it convenient to maintain their own regionais of 12–15
334 | Religion and Music
players, rather than hire freelance musicians piecemeal. These groups were usually
named after the lead player and were strongly identified with their parent station or
company (such as Rádio Clube with Waldir Azevedo and his Regional, Rádio Tupi
with Benedeto Lacerda and his Regional). They functioned as in-house orchestras,
and the high demands put on the regionals for stylistic versatility and high-quality
performances did much to raise the general level of musical skill to even greater
heights. New, difficult choros were composed to showcase regionais. In addition
to choros, these groups accompanied singers and instrumentalists in a wide array
of genres and styles, played dance music, provided background music, and filled
in between acts on live radio shows. Radio regionals often performed live in front
of studio audiences, and some groups even inspired the formation of fan clubs.
Through radio, the sound of the regional penetrated even the most remote parts of
the nation, where it became associated not only with the culture of Rio de Janeiro,
but as music representative of the entire nation.
Further Reading
Garcia, Thomas George Caracas. “The Brazilian Choro: Music, Politics and Perfor-
mance.” Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 1997.
Livingston-Isenhour, Tamara Elena, and Thomas George Caracas Garcia. Choro: A So-
cial History of a Brazilian Popular Music. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005.
Thomas George Caracas Garcia
Religion and Music
Though Latin America has long been identified with the rites and rituals of Roman
Catholicism, numerous challenges to this dominance in the region have emerged
since the beginning of the 12th century. In response to the highly ritualized style of
Roman Catholic worship, the intermediary clergy, and the emphasis on a central-
ized, hierarchical governance system, more egalitarian, unbound forms of worship
are under consideration. Furthermore, the post-Vatican II groundswell of interest in
the plight of the poor and disenfranchised in Latin America was in many respects
the orphaned child of the acrimony over the past 30 years between liberation theo-
logians in Latin America and the Vatican. Though Protestant denominations in the
region do not seem to have faired better in defending the dispossessed in the region,
the historical associations between the Catholic Church, colonial governance, and
the land-owning elite, as well as state endorsements of Catholicism as the official
religion (often from corrupt or brutally repressive governing regimes) has placed
a historical burden on the Catholic Church that has not encumbered the Protestant
denominations. In the end, Pentecostalism in particular has provided “a democratic
Religion and Music | 335
congregationalist experience for the socially disinherited” (Gordon Lewis in Stew-
art 2004, 588), while circumventing the need to connect social issues to its eccle-
siastical mission, given its near total emphasis on individual, spiritual salvation.
Religious Alternatives
Religious plurality is not entirely new to Latin America. Catholicism has, for ex-
ample, always accommodated elements of folk religion in the region. However,
the upsurge in religious alternatives is directly connected to increased globaliza-
tion after 1950 and an attendant rural-to-urban shift. Though urbanization is often
associated in the public imagination with a shift to more secular values, religious
zeal actually tends to rise, not decline: as cities find themselves unable to meet the
material and social needs of the population boom, new urban dwellers look more
fervently to religion in response to their state of dispossession.
Though the growth of evangelical and Pentecostal congregations has been fueled
by this demographic shift, these communities vary greatly in their size and affili-
ation to larger governing bodies. For example, numerous independent, storefront
churches can be found in urban centers where congregants can engage in exuberant
forms of Christian worship without alliance to larger federations. Yet, other Prot-
estant churches align with transnational Christian conglomerates, remaining con-
spicuously market-oriented in their presentation: televised religious services with
charismatic evangelists;
advertised healing hours; donation campaigns; broadcasts
from self-owned radio stations, reaching the most remote areas of Latin America;
huge arena-style churches that jut out from the colonial cityscapes. These var-
ied types of congregations can also be found among Latin American communities
throughout North America as is likely in Houston or Toronto.
Afro-Latin Religion
Afro-Latin religious communities are both significant in size and global in scope.
All of them exhibit, to varying degrees, multiple baselines from which their reli-
gious fusions arose, in spite of claims of religious singularity. That is, Afro-Latin
religions in the Americas are as likely to be influenced by multiple European and
Amerindian sources (e.g., Kardecism, Catholic iconography, Coboclos) as they
are by multiple African origins. The prominent transnational Afro-Latin religions
(e.g., Arará, Candomblé, Garifuna, Palo Monte, Santería, Umbanda, and Vodou)
all exhibit eclectic ritual compositions; however, the incorporation of drumming,
song and dance, often leading to trance-possession states, tends to be a common
and conspicuous feature. And, these religious practices have all migrated from
their primary sites and reestablished themselves abroad (e.g., Garifuna in New
York City, Vodou in Montréal, Santería in Caracas, Umbanda in Paris), giving rise
336 | Religion and Music
to contestations of authentic practice among the various communities worldwide.
Furthermore, the religious musics of these communities have become as transna-
tional as the communities themselves, making these repertoires more accessible to
and adaptable by popular music artists.
Religion and Popular Music
The enigmatic ways in which music is able to captivate listeners—particularly ef-
fective in engaging the emotions and the body—is undoubtedly why it is such a
widespread feature of religious life. However, the entrance of religious matters
into the realm of popular culture tends to be of a different order. Religious themes
in popular music are as likely to contest prevailing religious practices and ideolo-
gies as they are to promote them in the public sphere, making their appearance an
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