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Perreo is called a type of dance with sensual characteristics. In this dance, which can follow a slow or fast rhythm, a kind of game of seduction develops between the members of the couple.
The origin of the term is linked to the movements that dogs make during mating. The male, in this case, mounts the female, coupling in a manner similar to the posture that a man adopts when twerking with a woman.
It is also considered that perreo imitates sexual intercourse due to the way the dancers move. It is important to mention, however, that there are no complex choreographies or precise rules for the development of this dance.
Furthermore, you have to know that there are basically two types of perreo. One is the one that is done from the front and the other is the one that is done from the back.
It is believed that perreo was born in Puerto Rico in the late 1990s and later became popular in nations such as Cuba and the Dominican Republic. Over time it spread throughout the Latin American region and even beyond its limits.
However, we cannot ignore that there are many theories about the origin of perreo. Thus, there are those who believe that it was invented by the Mexican singer Paulina Rubio. Specifically, they demonstrate this with a video where she appears dancing sensually to the rhythm of the song “You look good” during the 1993 Lo Nuestro Awards ceremony. Specifically, during the performance of said single by the well-known “ The general".
According to the considerations of perreo experts, to put this into practice correctly, these aspects must be taken into account:
-It is necessary to have a lot of mobility in the knees. Specifically, you have to have it to be able to get up and down during the dance.
-You need to have strong legs with the ability to open them easily and quickly.
-You have to have great movement of the hips and pelvis, since they are the key to standing out in twerking.
Certain steps of perreo, such as knee bending and hip movement, come from other dances such as merengue and salsa. It is currently considered an essential component of reggaetón or reggaeton.
Due to the characteristics of perreo, it is a very controversial dance. Many times complaints and complaints have been filed when twerking among minors is encouraged, considering that it carries a lewd component that is not appropriate for children. There is also criticism of perreo by those who describe it as obscene and in bad taste since it reproduces or copies situations that should belong to the intimate sphere of people.
Sometimes, the term perreo is often confused with twerking. However, it must be established that, although they may have aspects in common, they are different. Thus, it is established that the main factor that distinguishes them is that the latter basically consists of moving their butt in a provocative way and doing it, specifically, to the rhythm of hip hop.
Medellín, the reggaeton factory


Welcome to the sound of Medellín. The Colombian city, the epicenter of perreo and home to superstars like J Balvin, Maluma and Nicky Jam, is the great home of the powerful reggaeton industry. A controversial genre accused of being sexist and misogynistic, but one that has made the planet dance.


THE SUN FALLS in Medellín and in the commune of El Poblado you can already feel the tingle: it's time to twerk. In the middle of the night, the cramp increases rapidly and unstoppably and in the Black Dog room no one is still. “Go hard,” Camila tells Samuel to the pounding sound of Los modales, by J Balvin with Daddy Yankee. “So, butt with a bug, daddy,” she snaps at him while, dressed in sneakers, tight jeans and a tank top with a generous neckline, she turns around provocatively, adjusts the imposing peak of her thighs and, bending her knees, moves them feverishly. in circles, centrifuging the friction. “Scratching, scratching!” he exclaims with his baggy pants and half-sided cap, as if held together by glue compared to the agitated swing of his silver chain. “Rayando”, in Paisa slang – the colloquial of Medellín – means “sticking” and is necessary to properly dance reggaeton.
Camila Maya and Samuel Alarca are 23 years old and are one of the many couples who indulge in perreo every night around Poblado Park. It is the same place on which the first indigenous settlement was built centuries ago that would end up founding the city of Medellín, today converted into the new world mecca of reggaeton, as New Orleans was before for jazz, Nashville for country, Buenos Aires Aires for tango or Rio de Janeiro for bossa nova.

 

Perro Negro, Alejandro Cardona's room, is one of the sanctuaries of reggaeton in Medellín.

In this city of four million inhabitants, capital of the department of Antioquia, flanked by the Andes and where the most bloodthirsty cartel in all of Colombia operated with Pablo Escobar at the helm, a good part of the most powerful industry of a musical genre that has conquered the charts all over the planet. Medellín competes with Puerto Rico and Miami, traditionally the great base of Latin music, as the first territory of this empire of rhythm, which was born at the end of the eighties in Panama as a derivation of Jamaican reggae and dancehall to, under the influence of rap and hip-hop, developed in the nineties with its own identity in Puerto Rico.
“Reggaeton now belongs to the entire world, but it has one of its homes in Medellín,” says Nicky Jam, an icon of the genre who calls himself “one of its architects” along with Daddy Yankee. At the end of the last century, both formed Los Cangris in Puerto Rico, a decisive duo for their songs, but also because they inoculated, along with DJ Playero and Tego Calderón, the poison of this rhythm in the streets of Medellín. From there have come J Balvin and Maluma, two of the most important superstars today, but also female references such as Karol G. The Colombian city has also become a welcoming place for prominent Puerto Rican exponents such as Ñejo, Ñengo Flow, Mackie Ranks and, above all, the American Nicky Jam, who, after breaking up with Daddy Yankee, was reborn as a solo artist in 2010 when he settled in the capital of Paisa. There he was revered even in the worst days of his life when, immersed in a spiral of drugs and alcohol, he played in a small hotel for tourists, was bankrupt and spent time in jail. Medellín rescued him, being the most obvious sign that the reggaeton fever was going to make even Botero's statues dance in the city.


 
Vida nocturna en Perro Negro.
@IE.GATO
“It quickly went from the underground to the mainstream,” recalls Juan Zapata, known artistically as Zetta Petta. A native of Medellín itself, Zetta Petta is one of the most interesting artists of the city's rich urban music. Sitting in a cafeteria in Parque Explora, the immense interactive museum where the metropolitan authorities organize open-air concerts, the musician says that reggaeton began to be danced in the schoolyards. He entered through the Internet. Colombian stations refused to play songs with these daring and stubborn rhythms, but they had to give up. Today Medellín is the city with the most reggaeton radio programs in the world.

Medellín is the place where you have to be one hundred percent. "He has the best vibe," says the Venezuelan Dejota2021

“You can already say that there is reggaeton made in Medellín,” says David Daza, CEO in charge of the business at La Industria Inc., the company that supervises the career of Nicky Jam, but also of the paisa Manuel Turizo, the last great talent of reggaeton. Colombian. Created in 2011, La Industria Inc. acts as a record label, publisher, representation office, audiovisual producer and marketing and brand positioning agency. It's a whole holding company for perreo. On the walls of their offices, installed in the modern Prisma building, hang photographs of all the platinum albums of Nicky Jam, the star around which a company revolves that, together with Infinity Music, by J Balvin—also based in Medellín— , is one of the leading artists in world reggaeton. “Colombia has always been a benchmark for music in Latin America and we Colombians also know how to reinvent ourselves well. Medellín adopted the first generation of reggaeton to make it its own,” says Daza. Compare the “reggaeton made in Medellin” with “the tray paisa”, the most typical dish in the city, a calorie bomb full of ingredients, making it the most “tasty”. In this way, Paisa reggaeton is characterized by having less testosterone and dembow rhythm than the original Puerto Rican, but more pop sense. “He learned from vallenato [typical musical style of the Colombian Caribbean] and, therefore, he became less dirty and more romantic,” explains Daza. “The Puerto Rican is more streetwise and competitive, but the Colombian adapted well and is more commercial,” says Nicky Jam.


Colombian reggaeton has not only triumphed on the charts, but has also made pop stars emigrate to it. Madonna and Ricky Martin recorded with Maluma; Beyoncé and Rosalía did it with J Balvin, and Maná and Enrique Iglesias, with Nicky Jam. Even Shakira, who said she would never make a reggaeton song, joined forces with Nicky Jam and Maluma. Another very important path was also charted last summer, in reverse, when J Balvin became the headliner of prominent festivals such as the American Coachella or the Spanish Primavera Sound. It was a milestone. Although La Industria Inc. highlights another previous feat: when Nicky Jam was in charge of Live It Up, the official song of the 2018 World Cup in Russia. “It was a strategic positioning of unimaginable scope. Suddenly, reggaeton worked in countries that rejected us like Israel or Pakistan,” Daza emphasizes.

Nicky Jam, J Balvin or Maluma are just the tip of the iceberg in Medellín. It is estimated that there are 100 producers in the city—among which three influencers such as Saga Whiteblack, René Cano and Cristian Mena Moreno stand out—and more than 50 reggaeton studios. Despite latent inequalities, the metropolis welcomes new artists and producers more than any other place on the continent. This is the case of Venezuelan David Jesús Tovar, better known as Dejota2021, a 27-year-old singer who arrived in the city four years ago to boost his career, fleeing the “sinking” of his country. “Medellín is the place where you have to be one hundred percent. “It has the best vibe,” he says on the terrace of a hotel in the El Poblado neighborhood. At her side is Frank Thonys Paris, her 29-year-old stylist, a Panamanian who studied Urban Fashion at the Sorbonne in Paris and who affirms that “Medellín is the world capital of reggaeton,” a place where “singers, producers, dancers, designers , youtubers and instagramers are trying to tell something.”

Nicky Jam, J Balvin or Maluma are just the tip of the iceberg in Medellín. It is estimated that there are 100 producers in the city

It is already dark night in Medellín, a city in which—as is the case in the capital, Bogotá, with its renowned clubs and, in general, throughout Colombia—no one understands music without dancing. Years ago it happened with salsa, vallenato or cumbia, and now it happens with reggaeton. In El Poblado, clubs and clubs bustle with their catchy rhythm. “It's very cool,” says Alejandro Cardona, owner of the Perro Negro room, referring to a style that is understood as a “feeling that runs through people.” Before opening Perro Negro in 2017, a place that from Thursday to Sunday endures endless lines to enter, Cardona supervised perreo parties in inns, houses, garages and hotels, until he realized that he was “totally internalized” by the people. youths. In the most exclusive neighborhood of Medellín, this musical temple opened where Colombians and tourists share sensual dances, as happens in other venues such as 1992, Guarida or Búnker. But the fever spreads throughout the city. “It is more uninhibited in less touristy places like Barrio Colombia, Río Sur or Avenida 33,” says Samuel Alarca, who has been dancing it since he was 11 years old. Even in the lower areas of Aranjuez, Manrique and Buenos Aires there has been a tradition for years of the paris, reggaeton parties that the paisas give in tents or houses.

It is in these poorest communes, the same ones where drug gangs recruit their pelaos, where reggaeton is most successful among teenagers. For Juancho Valencia, a musician from Puerto Candelaria and founder of Merlín Producciones, a renowned Colombian fusion record label, it is no coincidence: “Reggaeton uses narco-aesthetics. The luxurious car, the gold, the operated women... Symbols that influence the psychology of the kids because they see that the only way to leave the neighborhood is by achieving what those videos offer." From the Administrations, the executive director of El Bureau de Medellín, Ana María Moreno Gómez, says that the mayor's office has met with J Balvin, Maluma and more artists because they consider them “validators of the city” and they fear misogynistic messages or messages related to drug trafficking. Juancho Valencia warns that reggaeton is “a monoculture” in a land so rich musically: “In this country you throw a coin and a fruit comes out. For this reason, we have always fought against monocultures and boast of diversity. Reggaeton is ending the visibility of other styles. The industry doesn't want anything else,” he explains. Rapper Mabiland, one of the most interesting voices in Medellín's new urban music scene, speaks along the same lines: “The world of reggaeton is very hermetic and in the end it imposes its law when this country is truly a hive of sounds.”


The musician and composer Nicky Jam, one of the stars of the Medellín scene.

Medellín twerks non-stop. You can see couples, but also entire groups. In Perro Negro, Camila insistently shakes her hips next to Samuel. More girls join. “Let's behave badly, to feel good,” she says with a smile before moving like a provocative snake. While the Caribbean temperature of the night is rising, everyone gives off a devilish rhythm, very carnal and sexually lethal.

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