Exploring Puerto Rican cultural nationalisms: how Bad Bunny & Residente portray the archipelago’s culture

Abstract

Alright, folks you are reading Descolonizándolos con Dembow! This is the podcast where we analyze songs from the urban genre. In this special edition, we’ll be turning my doctoral dissertation into an extension of the work we do on the podcast, where we’ll explain to the academic audience who we are, the type of analysis we conduct, and what our philosophical approach is when creating episodes of Descolonizándolos con Dembow. We’ll also explain how Descolonizándolos con Dembow is a collective space where critical reflective analysis becomes an extension of an arts-based research methodology with the intention of presenting a multidimensional analysis that wouldn’t be possible with other methodologies.Additionally, we’ll explore how Puerto Rican cultural nationalism has been a space of proposals, as the colonial territory lacks sovereignty over its borders, turning the nationalist project into a battleground where nationalist proposals are politically charged. Thus, this special edition of Descolonizándolos con Dembow investigates the hegemonic cultural nationalistic construction of the colony and contrasts it with the various manifestations of popular culture presented in the cultural expression of reggaeton. Specifically, we’ll examine the nationalist contributions from Bad Bunny and Residente, as well as how these artists develop and imagine the nationalist cosmology of the archipelago. So, stay with us and let’s continue Decolonizing them with Dembow!