Reggaeton

Panama City, mid-1980s. Three Afro-Panamanian friends—descendants of West Indian canal workers—start translating Jamaican dancehall songs into Spanish. They perform at neighborhood soundsystem parties, the bass rattling through concrete-block walls. A young artist named Renato makes the first reggae en español hits, selling cassettes to commuters on tricked-out buses called diablos rojos—painted in wild colors, speakers mounted everywhere, bumping music through the streets. This is proto-reggaeton: Spanish-language dancehall before anyone thought to call it that, circulating through informal networks in a city where Jamaican and Latin cultures collided daily.