'Suavemente' — The Merengue War

Latino USA

My Cultura, Futuro and iHeartPodcasts

Society & Culture

4.9 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 10 March 2023

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For this week’s Latino USA, we’re bringing you an episode from the newly released podcast series from WNYC Studios and Futuro Studios, La Brega, The Puerto Rican Experience in Eight Songs.

By the end of the 1990s, merengue ruled supreme on the radio and TV in Puerto Rico, but the road to get there was long and complicated, coinciding with the growing Dominican population to the island and culminating in perhaps what was the pinnacle of its popularity and takeover in Puerto Rican music, at home and abroad: Elvis Crespo’s “Suavemente.” Journalist Ezequiel Rodríguez Andino shares the story of merengue’s ubiquity and how the shift from salsa to merengue brought to the surface serious class and racial tension that still remains today.

You can subscribe to La Brega here.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for this podcast comes from Wise, the universal account that lets you send, spend, and receive money internationally.
0:07.0	With one account for over 50 currencies, who's Wise made for?
0:11.0	It's made for jet-setters and slow travelers, for online marketplaces and real-life bazaars, for business in the city and pleasure on the coast.
0:20.0	Wise is made for studying abroad and supporting your little brother's schooling back home.
0:24.0	When you use Wise to manage your money across borders, you always get the mid-market exchange rate, with no markups and no hidden fees.
0:32.0	Join 13 million customers and learn how the Wise account could work for you at Wise.com slash Latino.
0:40.0	Hey Latino USA listener, today we bring you an episode from the new season of Laberega, a podcast about the Porter R.
0:46.0	Reacon Experience through music. The show is a collaboration between our very own FUTUROS studios and WNYC studios.
0:53.0	I'm not going to tell you too much other than this story's got salsa, mirenge, turf wars, racial tensions, and it's also going to want to make you dance.
0:57.0	I'm going to let you know that you're a great dancer.
1:01.0	I'm going to let you know that you're a great dancer.
1:05.0	I'm going to let you know that you're a great dancer.
1:08.0	I'm going to let you know that you're a great dancer.
1:11.0	I'm going to let you know that you're a great dancer.
1:19.0	I'm here with Ezekiel Rodriguez and Dino, our team's human encyclopedia, OG Belegadero, Radio Professional, history detective for stories about Puerto Rico and what else?
1:32.0	I'm a pop culture like a fan and I love music. So you know, to have a mega edal corazón rindete que el amor de vencio.
1:41.0	You know, we're thinking salsa stuff and other stuff all the time.
1:45.0	Yeah, that's why I think that's why when you said that we're going to go music in Laberega season two, I'm like, okay, I'm ready.
1:52.0	I'm ready.
1:53.0	And for nearly two decades, Ezek was also the co-host of a radio show called Frequencia's Alternes, alternate frequencies. It played on Radio Universidad and had this cult following a ton of Puerto Rico musicians got their start there, particularly in the independent music scene.
2:09.0	So when we were getting going on this season of La Urega, the team was pretty surprised that you wanted to dig into one of the biggest most commercial pop hits in Puerto Rican history.
2:26.0	And then again, hey, what a beautiful thing.
	...

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