Aurality and Anticoloniality in

Contemporary Puerto Rican Poetics

Alex Diaz-Hui
English Dept. and Prgm. in Latin
American Studies
adiazhui@princeton.edu

Gamaliel Rodríguez, Collapsed Soul, 2020–21. Ink and acrylic on canvas,. Photograph by Gamaliel Rodríguez
Aurality and Decoloniality in
Contemporary Puerto Rican Poetics

(or, “On Why English Majors Should

Read Spanglish Caribbean Poetry”)

Alex Diaz-Hui
English Dept. and Prgm. in Latin
American Studies
adiazhui@princeton.edu

Or, On Why English Majors Should Read Spanglish Caribbean

Poetry

Sofía Córdova, still from dawn_chorus ii: el niagara en bicicleta,

2018. Two-channel video, color, sound, on unistrut mount; 105 min.
Courtesy of the artist
Gamaliel and Kate
Rodríguez, Werble Gallery,
Collapsed New York
Soul, 2020–21. Ink and acrylic on canvas,. Photograph by Gamaliel Rodríguez
Upcoming Event at the Whitney Museum of American Art!
Natalia A. Pagán
Serrano, “To
build a home is
where you are is to feel to remind them/ that you are
not wanted” from a place/ equally troubling and
beautiful
(in The Acentos
Review)
 Natalia when I
asked her what
she might want
to say to Puerto Rico is more than the disasters
that put it on the news. :)
Princeton
students
Academic life is based on who
you put yourself in relation to, be
it texts, critics, profs, friends, etc.
GO TO LECTURES, FORM A WRITING GROUP WITH FRIENDS, SPEAK TO YOUR
PROFESSORS DURING OFFICE HOURS, AND TALK TO PEOPLE IN DIFFERENT
FIELDS/PERSPECTIVES FROM YOUR OWN TO OPEN YOURSELF TO NEW IDEAS THAT CAN
INSPIRE YOUR WORK
IF YOU’RE A MUSICIAN, TRY PLAYING IN A GENRE OUTSIDE YOUR FOCUS
“ Everyone, whether aware of it or not, has what we can
loosely call the theory of musicking, which is to say, an
idea of what musicking is, of what it is not, and of the
part it plays in our lives. […] If everyone is born musical,
then everyone’s musical experience is valid.
”
Christopher Small, Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening
Tom Rice, The OED defines "listening" as "the action
‘Listening,’ from of the verb 'to listen,' meaning to hear
Keywords in attentively to give ear to, to pay attention
Sound
to (a person speaking or what is said)."
Unlike hearing, then, listening is
understood to involve a deliberate
channeling of attention toward a sound.
Gavin Steingo and For our purposes, it is therefore not
Jim Skyes, enough to notice that sound is not identical
Remapping Sound to audition precisely because sound
Studies
theorists often make claims about what
lies beyond hearing—that is, what is being
heard. In other words, sound studies is not
reducible to the human sensorium, which
means that sound studies is not identical
to, or simply a branch of, sensory studies.
Natalia A. Pagán to build a home in their
Serrano, “To place is to sit in silence/
build a home is is to apologize for
where you are your silence when your
not wanted”
(in The Acentos
two-languaged mind
Review) oversteps a code-switch/
is to be an Other even
though there are others
 Question to ask
when we discuss
Salas Rivera: Is over the mall loudspeakers
this line about they kept calling out names
listening,
hearing, or both? (pg. 99 in Kindle edition)
 To listen in detail calls into primary question the
ways that music and the musical reflect — in
Alex Vazquez, flashes, moments, sounds — the colonial, racial,
Listening in and geographic past and present of Cuba [and,
potentially, the rest of the Caribbean] as much as
Detail: the creative traditions that impact and impart from
Performances of it.

Cuban Music
(meaning, it’s about close attention to a work)
Give your experience of
musical/artistic works, not an
account
MUSIC (AND ALL ART, FOR THAT MATTER) CAN NEVER BE A UNIVERSAL, SO
DON’T TRY TO MAKE IT ONE IN YOUR SCHOLARSHIP
 Listening in Detail is an interaction with, rather than a
comprehensive account of, Cuban music. It necessarily presses
Alex Vazquez, against and moves away from how it has been packaged,
circulated, and written about because “Cuban music” often
mirrors how Cuba operates in the greater imaginary. By veering
Listening in Detail: from the dominant narratives used to examine both Cuba and its
music, I open up pathways to other sites and sounds that
Performances of intervene in their discursive surfaces. I gesture to how the
location of Cuban music is impossible to pinpoint, but it is
Cuban Music nonetheless locatable. The definitive who of Cuban music is
impossible to contain, but one can spend some time with a
few people who have made contributions to it.
from Urayoán Noel’s “Heaves of
Storm/Embates de Tormenta”
The street is occupied—
who will itemize the broken skies?
Sorrow of flags the day you died
in leased home theatres
only to reborn in struggle
like a boldface cry
Yours is the blue warble of chant
after the dialectics.
Once the clouds have parted
you step into the din.
The day you died—
I heard a Fly buzz.
La calle está ocupada—
¿quién enumerará los cielos rotos?
Tristeza de banderas el día que moriste
en home theaters arrendados
solo para renacer en la cotiendo
como un grito en negrita
Tuyo es el gorjeo azul del canto
después la dialéctica.
Una vez clarea el Cielo
te arrimas al estruendo.
El día en que moriste
Oí el zumbido de una Mosca.
Personal advice on listening

 You’ll never get enough from a single listen (for the most part)
 Follow specific instruments, sounds, melodies
 Consider sections
 Rhythm (Drum, bass, lower end/octave instruments, percussion, other related instrumentals)
 Lead (Guitar, synth/keyboards, mid/high range/octave instruments)
 Voice lines
 Lead line: The main vocalist in a song
 Harmony: vocal lines of different notes that align with the lead line
 First listen (What’s catchy?)
 What stands out most as you listen? Is there a drum line, a bass groove, instrumental part, or vocal line that
draws you in as a listener?
 When it’s over, can you hum or remember a specific part of the song?
 Second listen (What did you miss?)
 Try to consider other elements that relate
Reggae en español

Originates in Panama

Begins with interaction with Jamaican immigrants

Starts from the late 70s onwards and defines itself

1996: Golden Age of Reggae en español

Nando Boom, “Enfermo de Amor”
Reggaeton

 Response to circulation of Reggae en español records, cassettes, etc. to Puerto Rico

 Influences from reggae en español, dancehall (another genre from Jamaica), and other
genres from Latin American and the Caribbean
 Like rap music, it was perceived as representative of criminality, misogyny, and
obscenity
 Crossover and appeal to American audiences begins in the early 2000s
 Everything changed with the “Despacito Effect”
 El blanqueamiento (The whitening) of reggaeton
N.O.R.E., “Oye mi Canto”
Bad Bunny, “Yo Perreo Sola”
“ I’ve long identified as a femme boy. I also feel my femme-ness is very Caribbean, very Puerto Rican,
so the models I was seeing around me in the US, didn’t really make sense for my gender. I need
colors, an excess of gender. Too deep a voice, too many colors, too much nail, or maybe just the right
amount, but for my gender. I need to feel like something is confusing in the way I come together,
because I want too much, beyond what is deemed acceptable wear for work. And, of course, I like
being seen as attractive. It feels nice to be liked! So, when I see Bad Bunny becoming a sexual icon,
it feels affirming. It feels good that my gender can be sexy, not just confusing. These are some of the

”
things that come up for me, but clearly whatever I’m seeing in him in terms of a queer aesthetic is
more than just this. I don’t know if I would say he reflects my gender as much as he has a gender that
felt close enough to mine that gave me clearer language for what was already there.

Raquel Salas Rivera on Bad Bunny

 Contemporary Latinx poets are out there and
writing incredible work that breaks every single
rule. They taught me that poetry is not *only*
Finals words from the poetry they teach us. We often discard
poetry as something that solely lives in the
Natalia classroom, something we *have* to engage
with and never out of fun. But there’s poetry
out there that’s racist and anticolonialist, poetry
that speaks and reads like us.