Winter in New York is a treacherous time for myself and many others. I much prefer the tireless heat of summer. Controversial, I know but with all its flaws it still offers warmth whereas the cold is always unwelcoming and bitter and I know when I’m not wanted. Combine these usual feelings of winter discomfort with a global pandemic, and you have me at what I like to call: Not My Best.
The other day I was trying to explain to a coworker my general feelings these days and all I could muster was, nothing is quite “hitting.” To even write that feels a bit sad and stupid. There is so much joy and nuance to be drawn from the mundane. I love looking into my building’s alley and seeing the striped, tan cat with its body plopped atop the rodent catcher. I love hearing my super and his friends conversing loudly in Turkish, reminiscent of my own Middle Eastern family’s inability to talk at moderate volumes.
But underneath all of that it’s impossible to ignore that something is amiss. There is only so much to be drawn from each day and like so many, I’m tired of ringing out each one desperately trying to soak up what little tiny pleasures there are when every day looks nearly the same. I want the abundance back.
During this time of toxic ennui I’ve leaned heavily into two genres of music that hold teleportation powers: reggaeton and Afrobeat. The former has been a personal security blanket for a while now, especially when seasonal depression rears its audacious head to threaten my characteristically smiley demeanor. The latter I’ve become increasingly more interested in over the last year but admittedly have a lot more discovering to do.
With both genres you one is not just listening to a reggaeton or West African song. One is listening to generations of sound development in tandem with each people’s Diasporic movements through the UK, South Africa, and the Caribbean. Like cells, you can close your eyes and almost envision the melding of dancehall, pop, reggae, dembow transforming their structures into new DNA.
Each bounce of a syncopated drum beat on a reggaeton song invites scenes from previous years travels allowing me to live vicariously through my own memories. When I hear the brush of strings on Ozuna and Romeo Santos’ Ibiza, I see my mom and me on a beach in La Romana on our last trip to visit her friend. The aggressive guitar on Bad Bunny’s NI BIEN NI MAL and Bad Gyal’s Fiebre take me back to the reggaeton parties hosted by the Rosa Perreo music collective I would frequent with a friend. Sweating in a compact space with strangers never bothered me but now it may be the only thing that could eradicate the pandemic fatigue.
Afrobeat is a catch-all term created by non-African markets to refer to all music stemming from West Africa. While the label itself can be considered reductive of all the nuance the genre encapsulates, the music living under its umbrella has saved me on some of the pandemic’s darker days.
The polyrhythmic drums on Ghanaian artist’s Amaarae’s THE ANGEL YOU DON’T KNOW offers a metaphorical life-raft. The EP is filled with anthems of independence and bravado that simultaneously evoke melancholia and an unrelenting urge to shake ass (the poetry just comes to me.) Several songs include the word ‘SAD’ in the title so a listener might be fooled into thinking otherwise but if you take a closer listen you’ll find the repetition is a mere red herring for the artist’s obvious self-assurance expressed consistently throughout the album.
Though I haven’t been to Africa this EP along with Burna Boy’s African Giant, DaVido’s A Good Time, and WizKid’s most recent project Made in Lagos provide insight into a culture that is unfamiliar. It’s a gateway to not just new music but new dances, new food, new people, new history.
It’s been so easy to forget the rest of the world exists and to dive deeper into a well of narcissism and self-pity when the rest of the world is cut off. Reggaeton and Afrobeat offer liberation and hope in a time when both feel beyond reach and nonexistent. The artists give us more than just the music but pathways to new places, experiences, and people; a respite from chaos beyond our control. The music always hits even when nothing else quite does.