Raunchy reggaeton has some seeing red in Cuba

At 10 o’clock on a Saturday night, the Mariana Grajales park in downtown Havana pulses with a thumping beat. Young men in drooping trousers and women in miniskirts dance, raise their hands in the air and grind pelvis to pelvis amid whooping, clapping and coarse jokes.

The risque dance style known as “perreo,” which translates loosely as “dogging,” is associated with reggaeton, an up-tempo mix of reggae, hip-hop and Latin rhythms that was popularized in Puerto Rico and has become a mainstay on Cuban TV and radio.

Now, the music finds itself squarely in the sights of critics who lament the genre’s notoriously suggestive lyrics, steamy videos and sometimes misogynistic stereotyping.

Cuban authorities recently announced restrictions reportedly declaring state-run recording studios and broadcasts off-limits to songs with questionable lyrics. They also prohibit such music in performance spaces subject to government control.

The rules would theoretically apply to all genres, but it’s reggaeton that leading cultural lights have singled out for criticism in official media while warning of new rules governing “public uses of music.”

Legislators are also studying a bill to regulate the airwaves and performance spaces. Artists would face potential sanctions for lyrics and performances deemed too racy, although it’s not yet clear who would be the official arbiters of taste or what penalties may be imposed.

“It has been decided,” said Danilo Sirio Lopez, director of the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television, in a December speech to lawmakers. “We will not play one more rude song, one more base song, one more song with offensive lyrics or videos that attack or denigrate the image of women.”

The proposal apparently falls short of an outright ban, but in a country where the government is the main patron of the arts and controls all airwaves, the threat of losing access to broadcasts, production facilities and performance spaces sends a clear message to reggaetoneros: Clean up your act, or else.

The past year’s hit song, “Quimba Pa’ Que Suene,” by Los Principales, translates gently as “Shake It So It Goes Off” and is a kind of homage to masturbation. The video was uploaded to YouTube and heralded as “the new hymn of Cuban youth,” and for the last year it could be heard booming at top volume at private parties, school events and other get-togethers.

The runaway smash “El Chupi Chupi,” by Osmani Garcia and various artists, was also criticized for its creative wordplay about sexual acts. “Go on make yourself pretty, and turn out the lights, the orgy has begun,” goes one of the few lines printable in a family newspaper.

Officials, critics and the influential Cuban Women’s Federation complain both songs are vulgar and demeaning to women.

“Obviously everyone is free to listen in private to whatever music they want,” said Orlando Vistel, president of the Cuban Music Institute, an arm of the Culture Ministry that promotes music. “But that freedom does not include the right to reproduce it and play it in state or private restaurants or cafeterias, public buses or public spaces in general.”

Cuba’s unique political and economic model may have cut many off from the Internet and other global phenomena, but they haven’t insulated the island from all of the region’s trends, said Roberto Zurbano, a promoter at the government-run cultural institute Casa de las Americas. Reggaeton’s popularity on the island is a product of those influences, he said.

“Reggaeton is a music that very much reflects the era, an era of marginalization,” Zurbano said. “In general reggaeton is about the poor people of the Caribbean, with its poverty, violence, precariousness, machismo,Find detailed product information for howo spare parts and other products. the avalanche of television, consumerism, the lack of values.”

Experts also credit reggaeton’s popularity to its simple but catchy beat. And they say it’s here to stay, as evidenced by artists from other genres such as salsa incorporating the sound into their music.

“Very easy to dance to. ... It should be no surprise that it has caught on so easily among young people,” said Raul Fernandez, a professor at the School of Social Sciences of the University of California, Irvine, who has written about Cuban music.

“The lyrics to dance music are often not exemplary in a literary sense,High quality stone mosaic tiles.” he added, but “people aren’t going to dance in order to be educated by the lyrics.”

Indeed, some fans barely notice the slangy, rapid-fire lyrics, or say it’s not the main attraction.

“I really like reggaeton. It has a beat that fires me up,” said Yanet Perez, a 28-year-old Havana resident. “It’s fun to dance to because of the way it gets you moving, although the lyrics sometimes can be bad or slimy.”

Records with explicit lyrics in the United States have carried parental warning labels since the 1980s, and last year the Rihanna video “S&M” was banned in at least 11 countries. In 2009, Jamaica prohibited songs and videos with explicit references to sex and violence from being broadcast on radio or TV.

The backlash against reggaeton has historical echoes in Cuba,China plastic moulds manufacturers directory. where genres such as danzon, cha-cha, timba and salsa once scandalized older generations by pushing contemporary boundaries of sensuality. Today, they are firmly established in the musical mainstream.

In the 1960s the Beatles were banned from Cuban radio, and some fans were forced to cut their long hair, reprimanded at work or passed over for jobs. Now, a Havana plaza boasts a statue of John Lennon and the nearby Beatles-themed bar The Yellow Submarine is a thriving nightspot.

Ironically, some of those who would clamp a lid on reggaeton’s excesses once rebelled against their own elders by listening clandestinely to John, Paul, George and Ringo.

“Reggaeton is very popular among young people,” said 22-year-old singer Carlitos “Papi” Chacon, who avoids explicit lyrics in his own music but acknowledged that many of his peers “say crazy stuff.”

As an entertainment device, the DNN990HD can perform a cross-platform media search for audio and video content stored on a WiFi-connected smartphone or connected mass storage device as well as network search for content through the built-in streaming audio apps. Through cloud-based services, the user can search for content by a particular genre or artist, and if a search is performed for a specific song, content-on-demand services will be used (paid subscription required).

For hands-free social media interaction, the DNN990HD can receive and send messages over Facebook and e-mail, and manage Twitter and RSS feeds hands-free via voice command. Advanced speech recognition, text-to-speech and speech-to-text conversion processing via the dedicated Kenwood cloud server make this possible.

While in the navigation mode, the DNN990HD pulls real-time data services from the INRIX Traffic Intelligence Platform to provide drivers with up-to-the-minute traffic, weather, parking, speed camera and travel advisory information. These enhancements to the Garmin navigation platform provide the most accurate, intuitive and safe navigation experience available today in a moving vehicle. Even when the vehicle is parked for the night, the user can still enjoy enhanced connected services by uploading routes, see previous routes, review music and video content that has been played and enter user preferences via home computer or smartphone app. Up to four accounts can be added for other drivers, with their unique travel and entertainment preferences and content stored by the Kenwood cloud server and accessible upon demand by the DNN990HD.

The DNN990HD will also share audio and video content in the vehicle with the LZ-T700, an external monitor/controller with a 7-inch touchscreen. The handheld LZ-T700 can be mounted in the rear of the vehicle using a standard mounting kit (available separately) and will control and display content wirelessly transmitted from the in-dash connected receiver.Posts with indoor tracking system on TRX Systems develops systems that locate and track personnel indoors.

OEM integration with a factory Ford SYNC system is made possible through Kenwood’s first-to-market introduction of iDataLink Maestro RR (manufactured and sold by Automotive Data Solutions). Using the iDataLink Maestro RR module and vehicle-specific quick-connect T-harness system,We recently added Stained glass mosaic Tile to our inventory. the DNN990HD communicates with the vehicle data network and SYNC module. This single-box solution allows the connected receiver to offer touchscreen command and control of factory system functions and display text, Bluetooth hands-free and audio streaming and SYNC voice controlled features while retaining steering wheel controls and factory-installed audio functions. New for 2013 is the ability to view and operate interior climate controls, distance and proximity sensors, tire pressure sensors and vehicle gauges such as engine temperature, RPM and other performance measurements. Also included is the industry’s first seamless integration with GM OnStar systems.