Decoding Despacito

A behind the scenes look at the music that is currently the soundtrack of the globe, reported on and written by Leila Cobo, Billboard's VP of Latin Music and the world's ultimate authority on popular Latin music. Decoding "Despacito" tracks the stories behind the biggest Latin hits of the past fifty years. From the salsa born and bred in the streets of New York City, to Puerto Rican reggaetón and bilingual chart-toppers, this rich oral history is a veritable treasure trove of never-before heard anecdotes and insight from a who's who of Latin music artists, executives, observers, and players. Their stories, told in their own words, take you inside the hits, to the inner sanctum of the creative minds behind the tracks that have defined eras and become hallmarks of history. FEATURING THE STORIES BEHIND SONGS BY: José Feliciano • Los Tigres Del Norte • Julio Iglesias • Gloria Estefan and Miami Sound Machine • Willie Colón • Juan Luis Guerra • Selena • Los Del Río • Carlos Vives • Elvis Crespo • Ricky Martin • Santana • Shakira • Daddy Yankee • Marc Anthony • Enrique Iglesias with Descemer Bueno and Gente De Zona • Luis Fonsi with Daddy Yankee • J Balvin with Willy William • Rosalía

A hybrid of reggae and rap, reggaeton is a music with Spanish-language lyrics and Caribbean aesthetics that has taken Latin America, the United States, and the world by storm. Superstars—including Daddy Yankee, Don Omar, and Ivy Queen—garner international attention, while aspiring performers use digital technologies to create and circulate their own tracks. Reggaeton brings together critical assessments of this wildly popular genre. Journalists, scholars, and artists delve into reggaeton’s local roots and its transnational dissemination; they parse the genre’s aesthetics, particularly in relation to those of hip-hop; and they explore the debates about race, nation, gender, and sexuality generated by the music and its associated cultural practices, from dance to fashion. The collection opens with an in-depth exploration of the social and sonic currents that coalesced into reggaeton in Puerto Rico during the 1990s. Contributors consider reggaeton in relation to that island, Panama, Jamaica, and New York; Cuban society, Miami’s hip-hop scene, and Dominican identity; and other genres including reggae en español, underground, and dancehall reggae. The reggaeton artist Tego Calderón provides a powerful indictment of racism in Latin America, while the hip-hop artist Welmo Romero Joseph discusses the development of reggaeton in Puerto Rico and his refusal to embrace the upstart genre. The collection features interviews with the DJ/rapper El General and the reggae performer Renato, as well as a translation of “Chamaco’s Corner,” the poem that served as the introduction to Daddy Yankee’s debut album. Among the volume’s striking images are photographs from Miguel Luciano’s series Pure Plantainum, a meditation on identity politics in the bling-bling era, and photos taken by the reggaeton videographer Kacho López during the making of the documentary Bling’d: Blood, Diamonds, and Hip-Hop. Contributors. Geoff Baker, Tego Calderón, Carolina Caycedo, Jose Davila, Jan Fairley, Juan Flores, Gallego (José Raúl González), Félix Jiménez, Kacho López, Miguel Luciano, Wayne Marshall, Frances Negrón-Muntaner, Alfredo Nieves Moreno, Ifeoma C. K. Nwankwo, Deborah Pacini Hernandez, Raquel Z. Rivera, Welmo Romero Joseph, Christoph Twickel, Alexandra T. Vazquez

A collection of 150 stories about music from all over Latin America, including Cuba, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, as well as Africa, the Middle East and Europe. The stories were originally broadcast on public radio programs on NPR, PRX's The World, BCC, KPCC and Latino USA. The book contains 12 chapters, each following a specific narrative: music and identity; education, community building, immigration, women's empowerment, adversity, social unrest and violence, instruments, producers, place and nation; the music of Brazil, Cuba music and the diaspora. The book's main focus is Latin American music from across the continent, with an emphasis on the music of Latinos and other ethnic groups in Los Angeles. The book also tells a personal story: the author's constant, tireless search for stories that help explain how complex and diverse humans are and how we share something so special that brings us together: music. This edition includes illustrations by Alec Dempster.

This book features 27 integrated essays that offer access to the art, life, and legacy of one of the world's most influential artists.

An astonishing read -- full of corruption, greed, strong drink and stronger language -- that reveals the rotten heart of the global economy - Oliver Bullough, author of Moneyland Crackles along ... they deserve credit for exposing the dark underbelly of the jewellery industry and giving us another glimpse into the real cost of the global obsession with gold - Spectator __________ All that glitters is not gold. Gold is the new cocaine - and it's just as lucrative, dangerous, and destructive. __________ Dirty Gold is a searing expose on the booming gold mining industry and destruction on the land and people of Latin America. It looks closely at a small US firm in Miami that helped transform the city into the nation's No.1 importer of gold into the United States. The book follows the meteoric rise and fall of a group of drug traders known as 'the three amigos' who laundered narco money through gold illegally brought into the US and raked in millions before they were caught. Whilst they were making their millions, the humanitarian situation in Colombia, Peru, and many other countries deteriorated dramatically.

Ambiance, Tourism and the City considers how tourism and urban development affect the lived ambiances of contemporary cities around the world. As most of the existing literature on sensory atmospheres says little about the intersection between tourism and atmospheric production, this book affirms the centrality of the notion of ambiance as a mode of inquiry into the making and remaking of urban places for tourist consumption. The book takes the reader into the sensory worlds of a traditional Italian marketplace, a jungle park in Kuala Lumpur, a slum in the Colombian city of Medellín, or the "sun and sand" tourism destinations in Southern Spain, among other case studies. It offers new insights into the impact of tourism on the urban environment from multidisciplinary perspectives and a wide range of geographical regions across Europe, North America, Asia, and South America. Through these contemporary case studies, the book further deepens our understanding of the ways in which "ambiances" and "atmospheres" pervade the physical regeneration and sensory transformation of contemporary tourist destinations. Conversely, this book offers insights on the effects of tourism on everyday urban experience. By bringing together a diverse group of scholars and case studies to present a global perspective on the atmospheric production of the tourist city, this book is to serve as a valuable reference tool for researchers and undergraduate and postgraduate students with an interest in urban ambiances, tourism, cultural geography, and urban planning.

YouTube has afforded new ways of documenting, performing and circulating musical creativity. This first sustained exploration of YouTube and music shows how record companies, musicians and amateur users have embraced YouTube's potential to promote artists, stage performances, build artistic (cyber)identity, initiate interactive composition, refresh music pedagogy, perform fandom, influence musical tourism and soundtrack our everyday lives. Speaking from a variety of perspectives, musicologists, film scholars, philosophers, new media theorists, cultural geographers and psychologists use case studies to situate YouTube as a vital component of contemporary musical culture. This book works together with its companion text Remediating Sound: Repeatable Culture, YouTube and Music. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by Knowledge Unlatched.

Adored and nurtured by his adoptive parents in California, Asher Stone has moved effortlessly through a nearly perfect life. He is on the verge of a professional soccer career-when a car accident throws his future into doubt. Suddenly, Asher begins to wonder about his past, and about the girl who gave him up for adoption in Colombia two decades ago. And so begins his search for a woman named Rita Ortiz. From the teeming streets of Bogata to a tiny orphanage tucked into a hillside, Asher untangles the mystery of Rita's identity, her abrupt disappearance from her home, and the winding journey that followed. But as Asher comes closer to finding Rita, his own parents are faced with fears and doubts. And Rita must soon make her own momentous choice: stay hidden in her hard-earned new life, or meet the secret son who will bring painful memories-or the promise of a new beginning . . .