Reggaetón and salsa are two musical genres connected not merely by shared geography but by their racial politics, transnational trajectories, and regional stances. Salsa artists like Rubén Blades have claimed that, although reggaetón musicians are perceived as requiring a different technical training in their craft, they have adopted lyrical styles and other aesthetic aspects of salsa vieja. This link has been explicit in the rhetoric of reggaetón practitioners: Old-school Puerto Rican reggaetón musicians like Eddie Dee and Daddy Yankee have been vocal about drawing inspiration from the maestros salseros while honoring this legacy through albums and performances. Yet, how does this connection extend beyond sampling practices and discursive references? This paper examines the transformation of Puerto Rican reggaetón’s compositional practices through its rhythmic and historical relationship with salsa, focusing on how the clave rhythm of salsa has shaped and counter-shaped the dancehall riddim and singing/rapping flows of reggaetón. Through a close reading of the 2004 album 12 Discipulos, in which 12 famous reggaetón artists pay homage to salsa, we explore the extent to which the instrumental layers and songs align or misalign with clave. Drawing on Édouard Glissant’s poetics of relation (1990), we contend that the rhythmic encounter between clave and dancehall riddim articulates a musical genealogy of diasporic belonging in an ongoing negotiation rooted in Black Atlantic diasporic traditions shared by these two pan-Latino genres. By examining how reggaetón discourse materializes in rhythmic design, this discussion contributes to balancing the role of musical sounds and discourse in ethnomusicology.

During World War I, music played a crucial role in the lives of soldiers in the United States Armed Forces as a result of systematic efforts to integrate it into military culture through phonograph records, singing groups, artistic performances, and the expansion of military bands. (Suisman, 2024) In 1917, nineteen years after the United States took possession of Puerto Rico through the Treaty of Paris, U.S. citizenship was imposed on the citizens of the archipelago, enabling Puerto Rican musicians to be part of this process through military recruitment. This paper examines the United States military’s strategic use of music in Puerto Rico, exploring why the U.S. Armed Forces sought to integrate Puerto Rican soldiers into its musical initiatives, and highlighting the resulting issues of racial, social, and musical identity that arose from this process. Drawing on historical newspapers and military documents, I argue that military bands served as a tool for shaping new hegemonic relationships on the archipelago through a musical framework that reinforced the musical and aesthetic values of the United States. Additionally, these performances functioned as sites of racialization, where Puerto Rican musicians were categorized and understood within U.S. racial and cultural hierarchies. By situating Puerto Rican military bands within the broader political, colonial, and social context, this study sheds light on how music served as an instrument of imperial power and identity formation, contributing to broader discussions of music, militarization, and race in the early twentieth century.

Between 1949 and 1960s, a period in Puerto Rican history some scholars call the Muñozismo period, was marked by an ambitious wave of infrastructural and cultural reforms aimed at overcoming economic constraints inherited from the Great Depression, as the government pursued modernization through state-funded programs known as Operation Bootstrap and later Operation Serenidad. (Lazo, 2017) The administration of the first Puerto Rican elected governor, Luis Muñoz Marín (1898–1980), implemented a cultural program that positioned music at the center of state-building and national identity formation. Music operated between these programs: the internationalization of Puerto Rico through European-derived classical institutions and the curation of popular and traditional musics through educational media and heritage initiatives. This paper argues that during the Muñozismo period, two parallel but unequal musical priorities were institutionalized. An analysis of these asymmetries reveals a Eurocentric cultural logic embedded within Muñozismo, whereby popular and traditional musics were elevated as markers of national identity yet denied the same institutional permanence, prestige, and international projection afforded to the classical tradition. In this framework, European classical music became the primary vehicle through which the state performed modernity, legitimacy, and refinement on the global stage, while vernacular traditions were preserved as heritage—valuable but not institutionally sovereign within the same hierarchy of national representation. By examining funding structures, publicity campaigns, institutional archives, and interviews with affiliated individuals, this study demonstrates that cultural policy under Muñoz Marín organized a hierarchy of cultural value that shaped Puerto Rico’s national image and its place within transnational modernity.

During the 1920s, radio station WKAQ in San Juan, Puerto Rico, played a key role in shaping the island’s national identity through its musical programming. Inaugurated in 1922 with a broadcast from the Teatro Rialto, WKAQ was among the first radio stations in Latin America and quickly became a fixture of musical life on the island. Influential figures such as Joaquín Burset, the station’s artistic director, and the Figueroa-Sanabia family curated musical tastes by hosting frequent, diverse radio concerts featuring the station’s studio orchestra and other popular ensembles. These performances included works by local Puerto Rican composers, as well as classical and U.S. popular music. Station host Joaquín Agusty and Burset emphasized that all musical broadcasts should include at least one piece in the style of a danza, Puerto Rico’s national music genre. Applying a historical-ethnographic lens to contemporaneous census data, U.S. Department of Commerce trade reports, printed programs, and historical newspapers, this paper traces WKAQ’s early years, revealing the station’s financial structure, reach, and programming. I argue that by consistently featuring local genres and musicians, WKAQ helped shape Puerto Rican national identity and consolidate a distinct Puerto Rican musical canon. The experimental nature of radio in the 1920s, combined with Puerto Rico’s cultural self-assertion under U.S. colonialism, positions this case study to provide valuable insight into how emerging mass media technologies influenced nation-building, popular tastes, and canon formation in the early twentieth century.