EVERY GENRE PROJECT - February 17 - Bachatón
Genre of the Day - Bachatón
Album of the Day - N/A
For the first time in this column’s history, there is no album to be found on the genre’s page. Not even an EP as with heaven trap. This is the case with forward thinking fusion. Today, I went to a local restaurant that fuses Mexican foods with Indian ingredients and had an absolutely delicious paneer tikka burrito. I can’t imagine that’s too common. I guess the overlapping space in the venn diagram of two iconic genres, reggaetón and bachata, is also quite small. But there’s enough songs to make a medley of sorts, at least, which was the path I took today. So here’s the list, with a Spotify playlist to boot:
Pa’ Que Retozen by Tego Calderón (2003)
Pobre Diabla by Don Omar (2004)
Ella y Yo by Aventura and Don Omar (2005)
Te He Querido, Te He Llorado by Ivy Queen (2005)
Mas Maiz by N.O.R.E., Fat Joe, Big Mato, Nina Sky, Chicago Bling, Lil Rob, Negra, Lumidee (2006)
Tú Me Dejaste De Querer by C. Tangana, Niño de Elche, La Húngara (2021)
Travesuras - Remix by Nio Garcia, Casper Magico, Ozuna, Wisin & Yandel, Myke Towers, Flow La Movie (2021)
EL BARCO by KAROL G (2021)
Volví by Aventura and Bad Bunny (2022)
BONITA by Daddy Yankee (2023)
I am actually quite astonished that there isn’t a true bachatón album yet. As evidenced from the playlist, the fusion genre has experienced quite the surge in reinterest in the past few years as reggaetón in particular has gone from regional domination to global powerhouse, spawning superstars like Bad Bunny, KAROL G, Rauw Alejandro, Feid, and Ozuna into the mainstream and smashing streaming records left and right. A cursory look at reggaeton’s RYM page shows how much it’s grown not only in popularity but in size, with the genre marking 500 releases in 2022. While bachata is iconic and definitional in its origin country of the Dominican Republic, its global popularity has never reached those heights, and as shown on RYM it’s not growing at the same pace.
Bachata is a traditional genre in the Dominican Republic, with gorgeous arpeggiated guitar melodies and a mix of impassioned and at times raunchy lyrics, leading to a rebuke from the upper class in DR who painted it as reductive and vulgar—rich people always hate the best music. Reggaetón has a shorter history, hailing from Panama in the 1980s, and its focus lies less in the instrumentation like bachata and more in the percussion, a slow and seamlessly interlocking mix of hard-hitting kicks and snares that bring together the best of dancehall and hip hop percussive instincts.
Given that one genre is more instrumentally focused and the other is more percussion based, it makes total sense that they could be combined for an intriguing result. The only tension, which adds to the intrigue in my opinion, is the fact that the reggaeton singer acts as more of an emcee—rapping skills are paramount—whereas bachata is much more melodious, with silky balladeers like Romeo Santos coming to mind. For the most part, bachatón finds reggaeton artists playing around with the lush melodies of bachata more than bachata singers trying on reggaeton, but there’s also a balance on tracks like Volví and Ella y Yo. overall, though, the marriage of these genres is something I’d like to see be explored more, and shows the growing enormity of reggaeton’s importance as it folds in iconic sounds from all over the Latin music sphere.