Carnival, salsa and stuffed TV: the roots of the success of Canarian rap

• Quevedo, in the last of EL MUNDO "In the Canary Islands there is a lot of influence from Latin America"

• Don Patricio in Ídolos "I didn't see myself capable of making songs that people liked"

• Ptazeta "They camouflage our eyes with a blindfold of progress that does not exist"

Most Quevedo listeners born after the year 2000 probably ignore him, but there was a time when

to explaining pop music.

Any city of 300,000 inhabitants that had three good record stores and four bars that programmed live music, in which some more or less cosmopolitan circumstance came together (a direct flight to London, proximity to the French border, the existence of a a thriving university or a foreign community) and some socioeconomic key taken by the hair, could become "a scene", a propitious landscape in which rock or electronic music bands flourished, related to each other by personal ties and artistic similarities.

... Everybody loved to talk about "scenes" back then.

The concept was outdated in the 21st century, when information and access to technology became universal, but "scene" is still a simile that comes to mind to explain suspicious coincidences: 2022 is full of Canarian musicians, almost all hip hop artists who border the great ocean of Latin and urban music, and who achieve unusual success for an archipelago in which the music industry and its artists had a local scale until now.

A week ago,

, Quevedo's song produced by the Argentine Bizarrap (better known for its refrain as

) has been

and adds 500 million

and another 300 million views on YouTube in less than three months.

Quevedo is the penultimate link in a chain in which he was preceded by DonPatricio, author of the seven times platinum

in 2019, his colleague at Locoplaya Bejo, Ptazeta (three million monthly listeners), Maikel Delacalle, Cruz Cafuné, St.Pedro, Danny Romero, Sara Socas... The most veterans record with

and tour America since 2015.

Seen as a whole, the new Canarian rappers do not form a scene like those of the old world: the

.

Many of them have met each other in Miami, when their careers had already started and their voices are easy to differentiate.

But there is a cultural landscape that explains their resemblance and their success.

Ptazeta.

The thesis, in short, says that the popular music that was heard in the Canary Islands was always, at least in part, different from what was heard on the peninsula.

That Latin music was always in the landscape and that hip hop has a parallel but not entirely common history with that of the rest of Spain.

That this has been the case for 60 years and that,

.

“It is a somewhat hackneyed topic, but the connection between the Canary Islands and Latin America is real.

.

And if you think about the melodic singers of the 70s, José Vélez was more successful in Argentina than on the peninsula”, says Diego F. Hernández, journalist and Canary Islands Music Award winner in 2018. That tradition was renewed and institutionalized

«The carnivals of Las Palmas and, above all, those of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, became the great test bench for Latin American music in Europe.

Celia Cruz and Juan Luis Guerra debuted and tested in the Canary Islands before testing in Madrid.

The Gran Combo Dominicano came every year and it was a mass phenomenon,” recalls Hernández.

Salsa, which in the rest of Europe is a rather cultured music, aimed at the university middle classes, is a truly popular phenomenon in the Canary Islands: it sounds in taxis and at town parties.

«I

.

We lived in France and the company made us move to Spain because they felt we had to prove ourselves in the Canary Islands.

The phrase they told us is that if the Canary Islands accepted us, the world would accept us," says Cuban rapper

.

"What I saw is the same thing I see now when I go, a place to find a lot of inspiration."

Quevedo.

Around that 1999, the carnivals had already left a legacy, they had created a certain structure, albeit a fragile one: there was a small music industry in which the Lagunera Discos Manzana stood out and the festival season had been extended with

.

The salseo had begun its journey, from the cliffs (the Canarian equivalent of the favelas) to the center of the city.

“There are things that seem absurd but that were important.

In the 1990s, the private television networks sold their advertising spaces for the peninsula on the one hand and for the Canary Islands on the other.

for which they did not have to pay.

I am sure that reggaeton sounded in Europe for the first time in those filler videos».

The one who speaks now is Carlos Cabrera Suárez, known as Sao ST, rapper and filmmaker, author of

success, a documentary that tells the story of pop music in the Canary Islands since the 1960s.

Don Patrick.

His film begins in the port of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria,

, even before Madrid and Barcelona.

Why hasn't there been any relevant Canarian rock group outside the islands since the time of Teddy Bautista's Los Canarios?

"In every generation there was a rock group that was close to transcending and didn't," explains Sao.

«In the 90s, that group was Los Coquillos, but their songs spoke very specifically about the Canary Islands.

When they went to the peninsula, they did not connect at all with the people.

"And

was part of that barrier," says Sao.

For decades, the peninsular public has ironically seen seseo as something typical of the most kitsch romantic singers.

In this, the world has also changed to align itself with the Canary Islands.

Maykel Delacalle.

The most complicated part of the hypothesis remains to be demonstrated: is there a link between the almost Canarian hip hop scene of 2022 and that openness to Latin American music?

"I think we have an independent ear," Ptazeta said in an interview published by ELMUNDO last May.

«In Madrid you listen to a lot of pop and in Las Palmas we go more to the Latin vein.

With that we can add ».

His colleague Cruz Cafuné was even more emphatic in these pages: «I don't know any Canarian who has ever heard a flamenco song or Sabina.

And it's not bad, it's another idiosyncrasy."

“For me, it is clear that there is a relationship,” adds Sao.

«The first Canarian hip hop group that I remember is Soul Sanet, which is more or less contemporary with

and Siete Notas Siete Colores.

And of course Violadores and that more hardcore vibe came to the Canary Islands, but if you search for SoulSanet you'll hear a different sound, a much more

, more melodic sense.

And I'm sure that came from the Latin influence."

Bejo.

«In Tenerife, the great entertainers of hip hop were the Veneno Crew, a group of rappers from La Laguna that attracted us to many boys of my age.

I don't remember them so much in terms of the influence of urban music, but I do remember that they

», recalls Tenerife-born St. Pedro from Miami.

His countryman Maikel de la Calle brings his family experience: «In my particular case, I can tell you that my parents have been a lifelong rock audience, but that

They saw her at the Santa Cruz carnivals and became fans of her.

It is clear that that left an impression on me ».

There are more derivatives that go off in unexpected directions.

When listening to PtaZeta it's easy to think of the dirty realism of Gran Canarian novelist Meryem El Mehdati, just as some of Locoplaya's tropical songs refer to El Guincho's short-lived solo career.

But ultimately, what matters is the socioeconomic nuance that he is exploring.

Quevedo's fans don't know it, but rap and Latin music were for a long time an almost lumpen culture that only in a community with a fragile economy and obvious social problems like the Canary Islands found its refuge when the rest of the world looked at it with disdain.

Conforms to The Trust Project criteria

Know more

• Canary Islands

• music

• Articles Luis Alemany