Dear Latino USA listener.

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Hey, dear listener, it's Maria nojos am.

Now.

You might remember a series that we shared on our feed and on our website a few years ago.

It was called Loud The History of Reggaeton.

It was a ten part series produced by our very own Futuro Studios and Spotify.

The host of the series.

Was one of the originators of reggaeton itself.

Yes, La La Viva Evie Queen.

Now Loud became a huge podcasting success.

It got a lot of praise, It got a lot of critical acclaimed.

The show was fun, it was edgy, it was unique, but it was also really deep because the series told the true story about how young people from Panama, Puerto Rico and beyond refused to be quiet.

They are the ones who created an irresistible musical culture that has kept the world dancing even up until today.

Now.

After Loud's release, the series vanished from our feet, and to be honest with you, that was beyond our control.

But you all noticed and you wrote to us.

You wanted it back, and of course so did we.

Believe me, we wanted it back.

Well, the good news never give up, because Loud is back.

We are so happy to be sharing this series with you again.

So go stream it, tell a friend about it.

Binge it.

Oh yeah, there's one more thing.

In case you didn't hear Loud the first time, or maybe you forgot, you should know there is a lot of explicit language and a.

Lot of mature content from Fuduro Media.

It's Latino Usa.

I'm Maria Jojosa today the first episode of Loud titled The Zone, and I'm gonna have the mic over now to the legend herself.

Ebie Queen.

Okay, picture this.

It's nineteen ninety five and I'm about to have the most important audition of my life, an audition to rap with the hotties on the ground crew and someone.

It was the moment that I was going to decide if I was gonna make it in the music or go back to my hometownels and nobody.

So I show up at the spot.

It's at the Ja Negro's place, his home studio.

When I walk in, all the guys are there in La Marquesina, and all of them are staring at me, and one of them call out, can I hear samamavi cha?

Who the fuck is that?

I am dressed all baggy, like, oh boy, you know me pantalone and so that was my style back then.

There are clouds of smoke.

I see somebody living in the studio looking kind of embarrassed, just saying case five, fuck up.

The Negro will get on those big megaphone and screen whea is I la caa the dinner care?

So it's my turn.

Ideas Negro is at the consola and he's like, show me what you got my bongolo headphones.

I'm nervous as hell, but I'm not trying to show you, you know.

So I do something kind of crazy.

I turned my microphone around, turned my back towards Negro and face the world.

I just let it lose.

No, no, your gold up reggae.

I turn around.

I'm not sure how I did.

The Negro look at me straight in the eye.

You and say Felaynest, congratulations You're in.

You could say that was the day that Evey Quinn was born.

Finanmente.

I was at that place that I knew I belong all alone for communs care that made me Daine and made me a household name.

Tavy Queen V Queen.

I got a hell of a banger with Ivy Queen on that record.

Everyone loved TV Queen and still do friend from that day on, I was one of the people who was part of creating a genre, people who came from nothing and struggled and made something new, something fresh.

I'll go with you, something for the whole world to dance.

Okay, And from Spotify Studio and Fortudo Studios, I'm Evy Queen and this is Loud.

The History of Reggaeton, Episode one.

The song today Reggaeton is the biggest music take on the planet.

We are at the top of the charts.

Rasano Premio del Mundo, a bad party, and artists from everywhere are fugging with our bags.

But a lot of you don't know the story and where this music really comes from.

But don't worry.

I got you.

It's a story that touches and race.

You don't see black people in media.

You don't see black people on television.

Sex this internal sexualistplava about life and a kaya, you know, and a lot of projects came out of drug money.

That was just the way, you know, that was the only way for some people.

Regaton is just varying music, but the real story behind Regaton, it's a story about resistencia, resistance, about how kids who were young and poor, black or dark skinned, kids who were discriminated against in every way, how we refused to be quiet, how we got loud.

Take my story for example.

I grew up on the west side of Puerto Rico in a little town called Ako.

I wanted to be an artist and so I was little, but I struggled a lot.

After my parents get divorced.

It was never enough money in the house.

I will help my mother sell candies to help out.

I left school to be a mom to.

My brothers and sisters.

But at the same time, Janto ga scene.

I have always had something to say, and so I started a rap on the street corners.

Then I battle in the project and later.

At the underground clubs.

The cops.

We had to be cool with the drug dealers, but not to close came out.

We fight back against the rich people, the polit because everyone who wanted us to stay in our place, because we wanted to be heard, no matter.

What it took.

And that's the podcast.

We're gonna hear about some of the top artists in the game and the old Gisco laid the foundation.

Elend is like the blueprint.

You know what I'm saying.

You know, he's the one that took it to the next level.

He blew up when tale comes.

He got that flow of Salceto's that yankee forever.

You know what I mean.

He's the boss.

He is Cucamo's Exclusive interviews from the legends themselves, Baby, and we are going to tell you the story of how we invented a whole new sound that was creative and sexy and turned the music in industry on its head.

We are going to spend time in Puerto Rico, New York, Columbia, but to tell the story right, we have to start in Panama.

People are under the wrong impression that reggaeton was born in Puerto Rico and it was born in Panama.

This is a jumbo, the legendary Panamanian producer behind the Guento.

People think that reggaeton started out with d Yankee from Puerto Rico, and no, actually it's from Panama, like a decade.

Before, and this is such the most popular Panamanian artist of today.

In Lejanero.

We did reggae and Spanish first, he said, even if others made a.

More commercial ado.

My he said, be Completiclo and he says who did it first is a sensitive topic, especially for Panamanians.

A lot of people don't give credit to the Panamanians, but it all started with them.

If it wasn't for reggae and dance hold Espanon, there wouldn't be no reggaeton, end of story.

I still remember the first time I went to Panama in the mid nineties.

I remember I was so excited to be at the first place of the music that I love, the home of artists like E and Nando.

I remember seeing the canal from the plane and Panama was dope.

I remember the streets were.

Full of people, full of life, and it was so multical.

There were black people, Chinese people, Indian, Arabs and of course the music.

Panama.

Gruz America is this narrow little country that bridge between North and South America, between the Caribbean, Yal Pacifico and you hear everything there sal same and Cumbia like anywhere else in Latin American, but also Calipso, soca music from Haiti saul music.

But there's one sound that is everywhere in Panama.

Reggae and dan so that started in Panama.

This is Renato.

My name is Leonardo Renato, older Mora.

To describe myself, well, I was the first guy that started to sing and promote Spanish reggae.

You could say Lenanto is a true originator of our movie and the main character of our story today.

Renato, he got a lot of personality when we interview him.

He got on a bee boy track suit, he was wearing sunglasses indoors and he told stories a mile a minute.

It's different stuff that came in and make this big pam and there it is reggaeton.

There's also this thing about Renato that you have to know to understand where his music come from, because technically Renato didn't actually grow up in Panama.

I came from the Canal Zone because I used to be on the part that used to belongs to the USA in Panama, where the canal was and the army basis.

The Canal Zone was a tiny American controlled area around the Panama Canal.

His mother worked in the cafeteria of the US Army base that was there.

Canal Banama, believe it or not, is very important to this store.

Sorry.

Coming up on Latino USA, we continue with the first episode of Loud.

It's a ten part series produced by Futuro Studios and Spotify.

Stay with us, Hey, we're back and we're going to continue with our critically acclaimed series Loud.

The History of Regeton hosted by Icon and Diva Ivy.

Queen so Nios always wanted to have a canal between the Atlantic and the Pacific, and Panama was the best place to build it.

In nineteen oh four they started working on it.

And to protect the investment that you created the canal Zone so they can have control around it.

But it's the Americans who metter Now, thousands of them lived like colonial settlers in the neat little towns of the Canal Zone, a strip of land forty miles long and five miles wide on each side of the canal.

This is a cheesy old clip about the zone.

The whole place was maint to look like a typical American's woodwheel, but right in the middle of US tropical compared with.

The bustling and not very orderly Republic next door.

The canal zone on the other side of the wire fences neat and tidy and.

Rather than military.

In fact, the whole place is run like a little bit of America.

And to build this little bit of America, they needed workers, preferively English speaking, so they hire around one hundred thousand people, mostly from Miland like Jamaica Barbados, to help dig the canal.

We had a lot of Jamaicans, I'm saying, we had a lot of Jamaicans.

And some of those Jamaicans were Renato's great grandparents.

After the canal was finished, those workers and their families stay around for decades and decades, families like Renato's.

You know what I'm saying.

I was born in a nice, beautiful environment.

We had a house, we had a lot of places to do sports, and I grew up nice.

But life was about to change for Renato Eltratrake In nineteen seventy nine, the Americans will return the Ganal song to Panama, which means the West Indian families living in the Song will be out of jobs.

So my grandma decided to move out and she came to Rio Bajo.

Rial Wajo was mostly a black and West Indian neighborhood in Panama City.

Many people from the Song moved there, and Renato did not let Riovaa.

First.

He get there when he was seventeen, and it was different.

Instead of big American style houses, it was crowded and cramped.

People could get roped in the street.

And to make it worse, Renato could barely communicate with people.

My dad and my grandma and my mom.

Everybody used to speak English.

Then I had to learn to speak Spanish.

And went forrmente he settling, and then he started to make new friends.

Two friends in particular that are important in the story, Regaissan and Franchito.

The way they describe it idea of what these street kids have in common, that they were kind of nerds.

We were like the dcent guys around the place.

It real about, we were like the good kids.

Here's Regaissan talking about Renato.

So that's not even my friend, that's my brother.

And here's Franchito.

As if getto Renato salad.

Renato sang Franchito Tolo, Tenian Azuelos and family from Jamaica and the Islands.

And the three friends have something else in common.

They love reggae and dancehall music.

In the early eighties, dancehol blew up in Renato's neighborhood.

When we started in Riabajo, they had a lot of discos, you know what I'm saying, and so middle class black people used to go to those discos and white stew no, but more middle class black people used to go to the disco.

One of those sounds at the discos was dancehall.

It was the new style of reggae that started in Jamaica in the late seventies, but it really took off in the eighties, the generation after Bob Marley.

The site came out of little clubs and Elbodyo known as dance halls.

That's where the name comes from.

And compared to Bob Marley is like the drama on the bass when a little harder and faster.

Was good songs, you know, dance songs because they had these rhyms.

Instead of singing.

It was like coman toasting, which is that half singing half rapping style.

It sounds tangrigo dan sasso and what Regor roots was very political.

Dancehold was like a little more what Jamaican calls slackness, songs about sex, partying or songs about the regular life in the hood.

Renato started tagging alone to the discos that played again Dancehold with an older kid from the neighborhood who was a DJ.

And one day, at three in the morning, his friend hands him the mic and tells him go HiPE the crowd.

So he used to told me, like, hey, man, say something.

But when Renato rab the mic, he suddenly frees up and he can think of what to say, and his friend has to help him.

Tell women to, you know, move their butts, and everybody lift their hands and you know, do that stuff.

I said, okay, arenatosis.

The crowd is feeling him.

That's how it started, you know, And I start doing that stuff.

So a friend of mine told me, hey, why don't you do any Spanish?

Oh my god, I'm when he hypes the crowd in Spanish.

The crowd loves it.

And I am playing reggae and I'm telling the people to lift their hands.

This is hit.

That was the beginning of Lenaldo's career as an EMC on a DJ.

After that moment, Lenato is Suitable started an experiment with not just hyping the crowd but performing the actual songs in Spanish.

We used to sing on top of the Jamaican rhythms.

That's Rega sam again, Donado's friend.

Are behind on the side A was a side B and side B was instrumental.

So most of these Jamaican songs we used to try to translate, kind of like this allu no beard from Morney and rong go wola fresh Gola fresh Goola fresh.

Allun no beard from Evening and rang go wola.

He can turn it over in Spanish and say bye science by you ain't Lama yesta.

Fresco wow Andregua Sance.

Because they came from West Indian families, it was easy for them.

We all speak Patois, we all speak English, so we had the communication with reggae.

Whatever you was hearing in English that you could not understand, we hit it back in Spanish and you could understand.

So mostly most of the music, that's what we was doing, translating for the people to understand.

They didn't realize it, but these translations of songs at parties were the first steps in the new heno known as regain Espanon and this is where the third member of their crew comes into the picture.

Franchito Co Franquito was one of the best improvisers.

He says.

Panaminim were great festylers because they already had a tradition of doing Calypso music, which was all about making up lyrics on the spot.

And cake and provis.

Regaxam started to do dance holds, shows and Spanish together with Franqito.

Some people used to call us don Quixote s and sopanzcause he was started and I was short, so he he was crazy on the stage.

Y Franquito had the first gig at a party in a Panama say.

And I could remember.

It was a Saturday night.

It was old school reggae.

And Frankito was a sensation.

This guy was going places.

He came out, he started taking his shirt off.

Garretts was screaming and he could have said something, Oh, you have to see the black presley on the black edy spreads and he start and they was just screaming.

But it wasn't only the girls loosening.

It over their music.

But the guys would come like they like it, but they get tough, like yo, man, I like that man, that was good.

I like what you did.

The party was lit, and San Dio and started thinking this dancehold in Spanish thing, maybe it could go somewhere.

Yeah, and then we start taking it serious.

The parties were going on on.

But this next part is where this new sound really starts to spread.

Reggae.

San Frankito Renaldo.

They wanted to get their music heard beyond the neighborhood, so they started recording on cassettes and they're selling them not only at the parties, but somewhere that they knew will take their music all over the town.

Renato and myself we used to record a lot, and he used to sell the cassettes to the bus drivers.

It all went down on the buses.

But these weren't any ordinary bosses.

These are the yellow rose red devils.

Okay.

They picture this.

It's like an old American school bus painting in crazy colors that has lights and it's all cover in muralms.

Pandama buss was beautiful.

They used to put my Ka Jackson's face on the buses.

Mike Tyson Roberto Durang and they were beautiful with a lota likes, you know.

And of course big ass speakers.

So everybody had these big equipments in the bus and it was like you're having a party in the bus.

Yeah.

Man, they may want it to be on that bus.

Yeah, you know what I mean.

Even though it was gonna be full, I was gonna be unconscorable, It's gonna be sweaty.

This is Rack and Ridge and Ragadoom from Loracas, a Panamanian American duo based in Auckland.

Even though they are from the later generation nan Renato, they have the same experience on the Diablos buses.

Every route had different styles of music, you know what I'm saying.

So this one route would have like nothing but old school reggae music playing.

But the mix was so good that before you leave the bus, you're like, hey, hommy, what mix was that?

So then you go down to the street to the people hosting cassettes and request the mix from that bus.

Yo, where can I get the tandel boos from this route?

You know what I'm saying.

I want this route, I want that route.

The music was so good that people will get up into the aisle and start dancing right in the middle of their community.

And back in the eighties, well.

Renato was so smart.

He will record and personalize songs for specific bus drivers.

Like one driver wanted his own hype songs for his route.

These guys call me, Hey, the bus driver wants a song.

I said, what, he wants a song, saying that he's the best bus driver.

I said, okay, And so Renaldo makes the song for the driver, get paid and then his home keep ringing.

Then know, the bus drivers get hey, I want a song, and they just say hey, I want a song.

And soon he wasn't just very popular only with the bus driver.

His music wins the love and the heart of the people writing in the buses is spread.

Honey.

That sound that's so famous because it was like it was a radio station.

Through the buses, Renato issu musica travel from city to city all over Panama.

The bus routes promoted and spread a new innovated sound, Panamanian reggae en Espanoli.

We'll be right back, yas they we're back.

Let's get to it and hear from the host of loud Ebie.

Queen Regae San Franciso Renaldo.

These three guys whose families were was Indians from the Canal.

Song was just teenagers having fun.

But little did they know they were creating a new sound, one that will grow and grow over the years.

But Rigassam said that not everybody in Panama gard.

Especially the community, not the black community, but the Spanish community didn't.

They used to say what music is that, where's from?

Oh, that's black people music, or they call it something else muska Dechombo.

The hinted chombo is a word very specific to Panama.

It started as a slur for black people of West Indian descent.

Back in the day.

It was considered as the N word.

Black folks used to consider it offensive, very offensive.

That's El Chumbo again, who took the word at his artist's name.

And the origins of the word is pretty hard to pinpoint exactly where it came from.

Back in the day, around the early nineteen hundreds, thieves in the Panamanian Canal Zone area used to jump fences after they committed their crimes, and the police used to call them jump boys.

So john boy became chumbo and became a bad word to talk about black people.

Listen, there are other stories about where the work.

Comes from that just want.

Getting called Chombo was kind of a thing that black Panamanians had to deal with on the daily.

In general, they got discriminated against a lot for being black and also for having English speaking rules.

They were sometimes treated as if they don't belong to Panama, even though their families had lived in Panama for generations.

Over history, West Indian Panamanians have their citizenship denied or taken away.

At one point, politicians even want to kick out the community from the country.

For black kids, Danzhel and reggae became a kind of defiance, a way of saying like, we're going to be as.

Black as we want.

At the Rasta, this is.

Frank, the third of the three friends.

He and the others grew out their dread locks, like making their connection to Jamaica, playing for all to see, and it got a reaction.

A young.

Taxi, he says, bosses and taxes wouldn't pick them up a lot of dread locks and the cops would literally stop them and cut their dread logs off.

It Racimo, the racism.

They put that into the music and talk about it on the mic.

Regaslan says he understood dance hound and reggae as a kind of resistance.

It's music that says so in Negroso.

It's an honor.

Pride for me is that I could identify myself as a black West Indian, black Panamanian.

Watch that you singing this music, because it's the only way that black, poor struggling people used to drag tests to fight against the government.

So it's not a coincidence that what Renato released his first real record, it was a this for the Police, canneth Lave Policia.

Here's how it happened.

Renaldo was working as a DJ, drawing parties when one day he heard a dance whole song that really stuck with him.

And I heard the song what they held the police can do and what they held the police can't do, I can't and don't do that.

It was a Jamaican song against police brutality.

And I said, ah, I'll do something like that.

And so in the mid eighties, Renato released a cover of the song in Spanish called El Denni.

It was one of the first studio recordings of a Rega Espanol song.

See For decades, s Panama was controlled.

By military governments, and the Danny were the secret police agents of the generals.

Well at the time Danny, everybody was afraid of the Danny because THO were the hard cops.

They would break down your doors and go in your house and stuff.

In the song, Renato impersonates a THENNY officer and it's not flattering.

Basically he said, I can coff you and hit you with a baton.

Then he's calling the cops.

Al Buyino pointing out that it was white cops that would target the black kids.

It was this but this that you could dance to.

Regaistan remembers what l.

Denny meant for the new gener El Danny.

It was a huge radio play all we had in reggae.

Renaldo don't make the first ever reggae en Espanol hit and set the whole genre into motion.

Betro to be honest, a lot of people have forgotten about him.

Here's Rakka Rich from the Rakas.

But even though we are the creators of the sound and Panama of the genre, I feel like people still don't know that Panamanians were the ones who started the whole thing.

Rakka Rich still gets frustrated about it.

When you create something and you know, you don't capitalize on it and other people capitalize on it.

It doesn't feel good, you know what I mean.

And it's kind of like you know what they say about you know the voltures.

You know, people coming and see what you do and then they maximize out of it and everybody, you know, even though you created it, and nobody knows who you are.

And hinte, that's the truth.

Without Renato and the other original artists from Panama, they wouldn't be no Regaeton.

But Renaldo is a bitter about that, just the opposite.

And when he looked back, it's just amazing that an English speaking kid from the canal soon will be so important to starting Draganapannon.

And I love it, you know.

I'm so happy man, because you did something that everybody's going to talk about it for years and we are so glad.

I'm glad man.

I'm glad for that yank.

Yeah, I'm glad for if Queen.

I'm glad for all these artists that are making its.

Renaldo, I am so glad too and proud of your work.

Thank you so much, Ebie, and dear listener, before we go, I want to let you know that on Tuesday, September twenty third, we are going to have a live virtual event where we are going behind the scenes with some of the creators of Loud.

We'd love for you to join us.

All you have to do is become a Futuro Plus member at the campion level.

Get that campion all right, We'll see you next time and as always, not by Guess.

Low.

The History of Reggaton is a Spotify original podcast from Futuro Studios.

This podcast was written and reported by Marlon Bishop and Louis Gaio and edited by Sophia Palissa Carr, with help on this episode from audri Quin from Spotify.

Executive producers Gida Bilbat, Adrian Aredondo, Jessica Molina, and Julio A.

Pabon.

We're producing help from Dan Bihar.

Executive produced for Futuro Studios by Marlon Bishop.

Produced by Catalina Gatta, Eggleston Ermees Ajala, Joaquin Cutler, Sandra Riano, Nicole Rothwell, and Daniela die Jogarson.

Additional production by Christian Edrera, Sevatiander bays Lunez, se Regazzan and Juan Diego Ramirez.

Fat check in by Tatiana Dias.

Sound design and mixing by Genni Montalbo and Stephanie Lebau.

Arting song is by Max.

Original music by Eco and Danny crazy Town for the Eco Team and Impulse Ell Intellectual music supervision by Big Sin Yours Truly recorded at Haga Studio by Maluri in Vernon, Ell Henerra.

Interview audio courtesy of Christopher Twiko.

Special thanks to Julio Ricardo Barela, Louis Luna, Lileana Ruis, josh Lin, grin Antonio, Seehidro, Alejandra Martinez, Sonia Clavel, Ricardo Montalbo, Jasmina Fifi, O'Neil Anderson, Jessica Diaz, Urtado, quimu Ello, Leah, Sarah Kayner, Vijon Garve, Jesse Hart, Sue Lou Brian Marquis, Lauren Monkey, Ashley sb Andrea c Nancy Way Slidkin and Jordan Tushinsky for production support.

I'm your hosts Evy Queen.

Make sure to follow loud the History of Reggaeton only on Spotify