Petra R. Rivera-Rideau, “Remixing Reggaeton: The Cultural Politics of Race in Puerto Rico” (Duke UP, 2015)

episode

New Books in African American Studies not yet transcribed

▲ 0

Transcript

This episode hasn't been transcribed yet Upvotes decide what gets transcribed next — 0 so far. Sign in to upvote

More from New Books in African American Studies

Michelle Adams, "The Containment: Detroit, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for Racial Justice in the North " (FSG, 2025) 1h 5m · 09 Sep 2026

All episodes from New Books in African American Studies →

Report any issue

Source

Recorded12 Apr 2017

Publisherfeeds.megaphone.fm

Handlerec:5415549

Show notes

Puerto Rico is often depicted as a “racial democracy” in which a history of race mixture has produced a racially harmonious society. In Remixing Reggaeton: The Cultural Politics of Race in Puerto Rico (Duke University Press, 2015), Petra R. Rivera-Rideau shows how reggaeton musicians critique racial democracy’s privileging of whiteness and concealment of racism by expressing identities that center blackness and African diasporic belonging. From censorship campaigns on the island that sought to devalue reggaeton, to its subsequent mass marketing to U.S. Latino listeners, Rivera-Rideau traces reggaeton’s origins and its transformation from the music of San Juan’s slums into a global pop phenomenon. Reggaeton, she demonstrates, provides a language to speak about the black presence in Puerto Rico and a way to build links between the island and the African diaspora. Petra Rivera-Rideau is an associate professor of American Studies at Wellesley University. She earned her B.A. at Harvard University and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. Her research examines the cultural politics of race in Latin American and Latina/o communities. Rivera-Rideau is primarily interested in how ideas about blackness and Latinidad intersect (or not) in popular culture, especially popular music. In addition to Remixing Reggaeton: The Cultural Politics of Race in Puerto Rico, Rivera-Rideau also co-edited Afro-Latin@s in Movement: Critical Approaches to Blackness and Transnationalism the Americas, an interdisciplinary volume that combines academic analysis, personal reflections, interviews, and photography to examine how different ideas about blackness travel across Latin America, the Spanish Caribbean, and the United States. Beyond her book-length works, Rivera-Rideau has also published articles about reggaeton in journals such as Popular Music & Society, Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, and Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power. Her current research project explores representations of Latinidad in the Zumba fitness program, tentatively titled Fun, Fitness, Fiesta: Zumba and the Production of Latinidad. James Stancil is an independent scholar, freelance journalist, and the President and CEO of Intellect U Well, Inc. a Houston-area non-profit dedicated to increasing the joy of reading and media literacy in young people. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

Ask this episode

“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.