JUAN MAGÁN FT. PITBULL & EL CATA, “BAILANDO POR EL MUNDO”

31st March, 2012

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"Inténtalo" was the first new #1 of 2012 to get a second week at the top, although they weren't consecutive. The one-week wonder that followed its second reign was this, an echo of the airwave-blanketing #1s of 2011, when party anthems by Pitbull and Don Omar sprawled over months. But the post-subprime blip is already shifting into other gears: this cheery club-ready celebration of women going out and partying will be replaced by another one-week wonder with a stronger dancehall orientation.

Like "Hips Don't Lie", "Loca", and Don Omar's 2010s appearances here, "Bailando por el Mundo" is a reworking of a less successful version of the song. Barcelonan DJ Juan Magán had released "Bailando por Ahí" early in 2011, and it was a local hit, and something of a culmination of a decade-long career. Magán had been making the specfically Spanish genre of hardcore techno known as "mákina" since 1999 with a series of collaborators, and was part of the first Spansih reggaetón act, Guajiros del Puerto, in 2004. (They drop the n-word like it's generic rap slang in the first seconds of their biggest hit, "Veo Veo", in case you wondered how appropriative they were.) He moved on to club music with the act Magán & Rodríguez in 2007, where he started calling his music "electro latino," which primarily seems to have meant raiding Latin American music for sounds and ryhthms to give texture to otherwise very generic house and trance beats: their biggest hit "Bora Bora" borrowed vallenato accordion as a signature sound. When he went solo in 2009, Magán aimed even more squarely at broad pop success.

"Bailando por Ahí" went to #1 on the Spanish charts in October 2011, the same month that "Bailando por el Mundo" was released, with Cuban-American rapper and empresario Pitbull and Dominican rapper El Cata taking Magán's verses and making them both more vivid and more generic: the original song gestures towards wistfulness (preserved in the chorus-ending line "fueron los días más felices para mí" (they were the happiest days for me)), but Pitbull and El Cata are more interested in boasting about their own importance and success than in Magán's loose character study about a woman going out with her friends to party in Madrid. Not that the original is some great achievement in aesthetic sensitivity: the thumping merengue-house and zig-zagging accordion are winningly schlocky but little else.

My memory of this song in 2012 is primarily of ignoring it. I was exhausted by Pitbull at this point (although it's worth noting that this is by far his best showing as a rapper on this travelogue), and Magán's party-happy music wasn't interesting enough to overcome my generic contempt for Spanish DJs compared to the far more more fascinating electronic pop coming from Latin America itself, particularly the amazing Santiago scene that I was deep into at this time. But Javiera Mena, Alex Anwandter, and the rest are in no danger of showing up here; so the limited pleasures of "Bailando por el Mundo" sound better in retrospect.

GLORIA ESTEFAN, “HOTEL NACIONAL”

14th January, 2012

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We couldn't escape the early 2010s without hearing from the kitschy throwback that was electroswing, and although I'm biased this might be the best electroswing hit of the era, most especially because it wasn't particularly trying to be one.

Gloria Estefan's Little Miss Havana, released on the 25th anniversary of her 1986 dance hit "Conga," was an eclectic dance album taking inspiration from the dancefloor-centric diva music of the late 2000s and early 2010s, inaugurated by Lady Gaga and complicated by Ke$ha, Katy Perry and Britney Spears in comeback mode, but filtered through the Estefans' cheerful Latin branding. The first single I heard from Hotel Nacional, and the one I really fell in love with, was "Wepa", a hard-jacking merengue-house number producd by Pharrell Williams, like most of Little Miss Havana. "Hotel Nacional," on the other hand, was produced by a young Venezuelan DJ who went by the name Motiff, an Estefan family protegé who would go on to have some success behind the scenes in Latin pop over the next decade.

The combination of swing instrumentation and electronic rhythms had been established as a winning, if terminally uncool, formula by Australian novelty band Yolanda Be Cool and producer DCUP with "We No Speak Americano" in 2010, a light house number that heavily sampled and interpolated Renato Carosone's 1956 Neapolitan hit "Tu Vuò Fà l'Americano", itself something of a novelty hit in postwar Italy, imitating American (and international) big-band music but shouting out rock & roll: its mandolin solo is in imitation of rockabilly electric guitar solos, but in a southern Italian idiom. Other entrants in the nascent electroswing genre that I noticed at the time (not being particularly attunted to it) included Caro Emerald, Sam and the Womp, Dominika Mirgova, WTF!, and of course Alexandra Stan. Most of which leaned more heavily on the electro-novelty end of the genre than to the swing end; but if there's one thing Gloria Estefan has proved herself capable of in these pages, it's careful attention to musical history and bringing a vanished past to campy life for a modern audience.

Not that "Hotel Nacional" is in any way as soulfully resonant an achievement as "Mi Tierra" or "No Me Dejes de Querer," to name two songs covered here before -- the opening trancey synth blasts make it very clear what decade this is -- but Estefan money can conjure a for-real wind section, not just samples, and Ed Calle's ecstatic clarinet solo over accelerating toms at the end is, intentionally or not, a uniting of prewar jazz, klezmer, calypso, and Cuban son traditions.

The song itself, as is appropriate for the dumb-dancefloor genre, is very little, a collection of dancefloor nostrums and old-fashioned cultural references, sung-spoken mostly in English until breaking into the kind of French that is more cultural signifier than direct communication. Even the refrain "it's time for hoochie-coochie" is slang more than a century old: the term "hoochie coochie dance" was coined to describe Egyptian bellydance (or imitations of it), first popularized in the Americas at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago, and soon by extension any salacious dance, although the athletic jitterbugging in the video is, like everything else about it, pretty asexual. (By the end of 2012, Gloria would be a grandmother.)

The official video's YouTube description notes that it was inspired by The Rocky Horror Picture Show, La Cage aux Follies, and Some Like It Hot among others (of which the postmodern cacophony of Moulin Rouge is the most obvious ommission) -- the faint narrative thread of a young straitlaced couple whose car breaks down so they take refuge in a building that turns out to be a deliriously campy rave-up (with extremely limited gender play as compared to any of those movies) is enough to carry it.

I can't pretend I don't love it: my deep love of music history and affection for wide ranges of genre mean that electroswing was always exactly my kind of kitsch even though it never became central to my listening; that would defeat the purpose of it for me. Variety is my highest good, and 2012 is the most varied year this travelogue has seen (or will ever see again, it seems). Buckle in for a ride.

INDIA, “SEDÚCEME”

15th February, 2003

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The arbitrariness of the charts strikes again, as the Nuyorican singer to whom Jennifer Lopez is most indebted only appears on this blog now, years after J-Lo made her casual appearance. Linda Viera Caballero, nicknamed "la India" (the Indian) by family because of her darker complexion and straight black hair, had started in a freestyle group in the mid-80s and made a "Latin Madonna" record in 1988, but only really came into her own when she met Latin jazz titan Eddie Palmieri in 1991. Her big but flexible voice and facility with jazz, salsa, and r&b made her one of the great Latin singers of the 1990s, switching between Spanish on dynamic salsa workouts and English on legendary house tracks from local New York and New Jersey producers.

Her 2002 album Latin Song Bird: Mi Alma y Corazón was a kind of capstone on a decade of great work, a summary of her whole repertoire (the next album would be a Greatest Hits), with punchy electronic updates of classic Caribbean sounds from salsa and bolero to merengue and bachata to straightforward romantic ballads and even a Christmas song. "Sedúceme" was the big hit: it was on the album in both salsa and ballad versions, and would also be released in English as a series of house remixes ranging from rote to classic banger.

But the salsa original, which leads off the album and soundtracks the music video, is fully as vibrant and modern as any club mix: much of the salsa instrumentation may be traditional, but synth strings, electric bass, and glassy pianos swirl in the mix much like samples or patches in a DJ's mix. But the star of the song is undeniably her voice, which combines traditional diva power with a jazzy, soulful sense of timing and phrasing. Since most of the female-led salsa we've heard over the course of this travelogue has been from pop singers like Thalía, Gloria Estefan, or Daniela Roma, it's a real pleasure to hear la India's powerful control and rich technique in service of a basic but universal sentiment: love me now, for the moment is fleeting, and I want to carry the memory of your body in mine.

GLORIA ESTEFAN, “¡OYE!”

5th September, 1998

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If it's possible to draw conclusions about long-term trends in Latin pop from the very top of the Billboard Latin chart (a very shaky proposition), it might be useful to consider Gloria Estefan a bellweather. On the cusp of the 90s, she pointed to the overwhelming preponderance of adult contemporary that would make up the majority of the decade's number ones; and four years later she predicted the revitalization of traditional roots music that would be the major thrust of the decade's second half. Now, as the 90s wane, she returns with the first #1 to invest in modern club music since José Luis Rodriguez' "Baila Mi Rumba" in 1989. This is rather a large hint as to the direction in which Latin pop (or indeed all pop) is headed; but no spoilers.

But "¡Oye!" (listen!) also positions itself in the newly vital salsa current, as jump-started in this travelogue by Marc Anthony; one of the repeated refrains is "mi cuerpo pide salsa" (my body wants salsa), and the production connects the dots between Nuyorican salsa and Detroit house, never more explicitly than when the electric piano beats out a steady melodic rhythm. As a piece of dance music, it's wonderfully and characteristically inventive, balancing the steady bass 4/4 required for modern dance music with trad mambo (which is to say swing) horn charts, Cuban percussion, and call-and-response gritos (from, I belive, Emilio) that urge a physical response.

The Estefan machine was by now world-conquering, of course — Gloria's only real peer at this point was Madonna — and the slickness and efficiency of the production is a little breathtaking even today. 1998 is, it's worth noting, when the Loudness Wars began to heat up in earnest, which means that from the perspective of 2012, it's when everything begins to sound completely modern, mastered at an ear-popping volume which lets you feel the bass in your gut even through tinny Apple buds.

The final marker of modernity is the fact that the video linked above is a remix. The parent album, Gloria!, was mostly in English, and the original Oye! (the video's here) has English-language verses. This is the Pablo Flores Spanish Mix, which is only slightly different (the clubby synths were Flores' addition — he's been the Estefans' in-house mixer and remixer since the 80s), and as far as I can tell this was the version that got playlisted on Latin radio. (It's the one included on her Spanish-language greatest hits package, for instance.) As this travelogue slowly catches up to the present, and artists continue to record and release multiple versions of their songs in order to maximize revenue streams, I'll have to make more of these judgment calls as to which version to feature on the blog. Which in this case isn't much of a big deal; both versions are fantastic.

JON SECADA, “SI TE VAS”

13th August, 1994

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Two years ago, he burst onto this list like a breath of fresh, modernizing air, his soulful voice pirouetting with the sheer joy of self; now, he slogs his way through a dispirited power ballad, leaning on crutches that have long since gone out of favor, a shell of his former self.

It's worth noting, of course, that neither of those things are entirely true: "Otro Día Más Sin Verte" wasn't nearly as revolutionary as it seemed at the time, particularly now that world has Selena in it, and "Si Te Vas" is neither his low-point nor the end of the road for him, though it is the end of our association with him. Like many former and to-be-former number-one stars, he's dug a comfortable niche for himself as an overtanned, permagrinning fixture on the Latin nostalgia circuit, releasing an album every so often — the most recent is Clásicos/Classics, a trip through American-Latin standards that begins with "Oye Como Va" and ends with "La Bamba" — without bothering a chart that is increasingly focused on what the kids are listening to these days.

So perhaps the inevitable comparison here is to Billy Joel's "River Of Dreams," a similarly bland, soulless song that makes similar use of the gospel-choir crutch, which similarly marked the end of a career as a pop hitmaker, and which similarly exposed melodic and vocal weaknesses that were not previously so noticeable. Secada's voice actually sounds patchy here, like he might be sick or like he's laying down a demo vocal which they'll nail on the second pass. (Or, if it were several years later, which the producer forgot to pitch-correct before the track went to master.) The track starts promisingly, with a twinkly piano line that recalls house music, but any interesting production ideas are soon thrown out the window so that Secada can emote (poorly) all over the place.

"Si Te Vas" means "if you go," and it's as standard a lament/vow of love as the title promises. Unfortunately for him, Secada hasn't learned another trick; he's still pushing his once-fascinating combination of vaguely funky beats, soul-style singing, and dreary romanticism, and he's being left behind.

BARRIO BOYZZ & SELENA, "DONDEQUIERA QUE ESTÉS"

26th March, 1994

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World, she's arrived. Prepare to be changed.

We've encountered Selena before, but while she was notable, the song wasn't: a perfunctory saunter through a traditional romántico duet that almost anyone we've seen in these pages to date could have done just as well, to just as little effect. And she's back duetting with another flash-in-the-pan; for the second time, she's just about the only reason to pay attention to her partners' second (of two) appearances at the top.

But Barrio Boyzz, while they may not graze our notice again, have this much over Álvaro Torres: they sound like Now. The snapping new jack swing beat, the house piano, and the alternately lush and silky harmonies are all precisely where urban candyfloss pop was at in 1994, and Selena has outgrown her Ana Gabriel imitation, instead channeling an r&b diva that not only keeps up with but far outpaces the Boyzz. Their name was on the hit — she was officially a guest on their album, which was named for the song — but nobody buys Barrio Boyzz compilations for the song: by all reckonings, it's her first major hit, the place where Srta. Quintanilla-Pérez, quinceañera performer, talent-show winner, and jobbing local-circuit singer, became Selena, global pop star.

The song (as opposed to the production) is still not quite worthy of her talents. The translated title would be "Wherever You Are," and the chorus continues, just as tritely in Spanish as it comes out in English: "remember, I will be there at your side ... I think of you and feel for you ... I will always be your first love." But she has a sharper sense of rhythm than her duet partners and is in full command of her impressive vocal faculties, and once the dovey lyrics die down and she can just play with the beat, she scats circles around all of them. Not even Mariah was showboating like this; Mary J. Blige is about the only English-language equivalent, and she hadn't yet come fully into her own either.

But enjoy the breezy New York funk while it lasts; when she returns, it will be as a full-throated Texan, and the world will be, ever so briefly, hers.