"Así Son": Salsa Music, Female Narratives, and Gender (De)Construction in Puerto Rico

Latin American cultural studies have not dealt systematically with the impact of popular music-particularly salsa-on gender roles in the Hispanic Caribbean. This essay analyzes the ways in which women are negatively represented and constructed in popular song lyrics, both in the overall tradition of Caribbean music (the bolero, the merengue, and salsa) and in two specific musical texts by Willie Colón and by El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico. Beyond denouncing female stereotypes in music in the process of reading women's representation in Latin popular music (listening woman), this essay also proposes a critical praxis, listening as a woman, which constitutes an actively deconstructive stance toward patriarchal salsa songs. This problematizing position is exemplified by Ana Lydia Vega and Carmen Lugo Filippi in their short story "Cuatro selecciones por una peseta." Most Latinas engage in listening as women in their individual and social interactions with music. The results of ethnographic interviews with twenty Latinas in the United States suggest that Hispanic women are not passive listeners, but are constantly engaged in reading patriarchal song lyrics and even in rewriting them, affirming their autonomy in heterosexual relationships. While women have not yet achieved truly liberatory texts against misogyny in popular music, Latinas do contest and deconstruct these gender inscriptions through acts of listening and of writing.