Music / Styles A–Z / The Caribbean and Latin America · 25 of 35
Reggaeton
Reggaeton grew in Puerto Rico from the Spanish-language reggae of Panama in the late 1980s. It is built on the dembow beat, a looped 3+3+2 pattern rooted in dancehall.
- Where and when
- Panama in the late 1980s; Puerto Rico and Miami in the early 1990s
- Tempo
- Not stated in our sources
- Played on
- Dembow drum pattern on drum machine, voice, samples
What it is
Reggaeton grew in Puerto Rico from the Spanish-language reggae of Panama in the late 1980s, and the name became common in the early 2000s. It is built on the dembow beat, a pattern rooted in dancehall, soca and calypso.
For the producer. The dembow takes its name from Shabba Ranks' 1990 dancehall song "Dem Bow". It is a 3+3+2 tresillo cross-rhythm with a slight syncopation on every other half-beat, usually run as a loop: write it first, then everything else. Dancehall producers in the mid-1980s made their riddims on electronic keyboards and drum machines, and reggaeton producers carried that on.
The records that made it
From the lesson The Caribbean and Latin America, where the sources are listed · links open a search
- Barrio FinoDaddy Yankee · Opened reggaeton to the world.
- GasolinaDaddy Yankee · The single from Barrio Fino.
- Hips Don't LieShakira with Wyclef Jean · The dembow beat with a salsa-inflected trumpet sample.
Reggaeton in this month’s records
New releases the press we read wrote about, tagged reggaeton on MusicBrainz · updated with every build