Art by Mariana Crottollini (Argentina)
Perhaps reggaeton should exist, like a virus born from ourselves.
By Guillermo Cides
No. Music begins to die when radio stations choose to seek audiences and money over quality, losing the initial meaning of the origin of FMs. It dies when you try to have live music and discuss the price with the musician. It starts to die when other musicians play for pizza, destroying the job market. Music dies when municipalities, city councils, and government organizations decide that music is dispensable and then talk about “education” when reggaeton appears. Reggaeton is simply an opportunistic parasite and does not kill music. Music begins to die when record companies impose products without ethics and for money. When television stations accept these products and promote them because “it is what people listen to”. There, the music dies. It dies when it is not understood that students must be educated musically along with subjects such as ethics, sociology, and mathematics.
Music dies before reggaeton appears. It dies when we laugh at artists, and it dies when artists are invented who only want fame and money. False artists born from emptiness. It dies at every mediocre festival full of opportunism. It dies in the lack of emotion and silence before a melody that would have the ability to make us close our eyes and shudder like nothing ever did. Music dies when a beer with friends and background music are more important because of the shame of the overall emotion. Music dies when we accept to listen to what is imposed on us instead of looking for another, and when those with “cultural power” do not give opportunities to young musicians who want to do something else.
Reggaeton does not kill music. Our hypocrisy in believing that reggaeton exists by itself and is not a product of our own ignorance or of our own society is what kills it. Maybe reggaeton should exist, like a virus born from ourselves when we try to make music die.
G.C.
