Translating a Reggaetón Poem

In the essay below, translator Kristin Dykstra responds to a question from WWB Campus editor Nadia Kalman, describing her process and sharing some ideas for bringing the poem to students.

Kristin, as I mentioned, I love your translation. Do you remember how you decided on the approach you used, which preserves some of the rhythmic musicality of the original text? Were there any words or phrases you remember as being especially challenging to translate?

My response has both the drawbacks and benefits of being written years after I did this translation. But this gap in time is a real and present issue for translators, since we are always translating at some gap in time from the original poem's composition anyway. How do we approach gaps in time? Elsewhere, I’ve commented on how the translator’s perception of a poem can continue to evolve long after one’s translation text is published, and that’s the frame that applies here.

First, the spelling of the word “reggaetón” in English varies. Some of my sources for this write-up used “regguetón” or “reguetón,” and there are also variants with and without the accent. I like that unpredictable variety. It embodies the essence of popular culture, so I decided not to standardize the spelling, even in my own text, as I adapt to the flow of sources here. Exercising that control would be inaccurate to the material.

I received this reggaetón poem from Omar sometime in the first decade of the twenty-first century, after he had published quite different books of poetry. At the time, I would get unpublished manuscripts from Omar while he was still engaged in the creative process. He wouldn’t send them until he had a new concept well underway, so I could see that there was a new project with its own worldviews, but aesthetically, I wasn’t sure what I was seeing.

Why would the author of the very sharp, thoughtful Algo de lo Sagrado (which I had translated as Something of the Sacred) write a reggaetón? Did this poem have anything to do with the phase of his poetry influenced by Zen Buddhism, which affects Omar’s 1998 collection, Oiste Hablar del Gato de Pelea? I would have been finishing final edits to the translation of that book (Did You Hear about the Fighting Cat, published by Shearsman in 2010). I also visited Omar in 2010 and got a sense of his emerging interest in music and other artistic influences on poetry.

Omar’s earlier poetry attracted high praise in Cuba and was very challenging to translate. I thought a lot about textual flow as the motion of key ideas and concepts, and I took in a lot of contextual remarks from his contemporaries that influenced how I dealt with words or lines. Omar then made explicit use of a different musical form in the Fighting Cat book, with a poem title conjuring the genre of guaguancó, one of the African-influenced forms prominent in Cuban national culture (1).

Previously, I had not worked a lot with poems where rhythm should be so exact, and I sought out examples of guaguancó. Here, form mattered in a new way. At the same time, I thought about musical form as always potentially flexible, since in actual performance, singers can stretch syllables or lines by adding rests, extending the length of notes across beats, and so forth.

Getting to the regguetón poem, one of the primary connections I could still see was that Omar was using a set form but making conceptual interventions that reminded me of his earlier work. In much of his work, Omar uses reversals: reversing common expectations, opposing even himself. I started to see the poem as both using and contradicting expectations of what a “reggaetón” might do.

I speculate that Omar sees all art forms as reaching us on many levels, and while his intellectual abilities are sharp, his twenty-first century poems explore how the arts reach us on many other levels too. Regardless of whatever intentions he might name (though Omar has often refused to offer that guidance to readers), I think this poem would confuse people who view reggaetón as static or unidimensional, or only about money. If individual musicians might deliver predictable and marketable products, the arts always have potential to operate on many levels.

Historically, the roots of reggaetón have been associated with Panama, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico, drawing on salsa, reggae, rumba, rap, and dancehall (2). Reggaetón is said to have come into Cuba from its eastern side – that is, not via the cosmopolitanism of Havana, but from the provinces closer to the rest of the Caribbean archipelago, Santiago de Cuba and Guantánamo. In 2012 Nora Gámez Torres stated, “Most Cuban reggaeton has been produced in home-based studios and distributed by street sellers because record companies have paid little attention to this genre” (3, p. 229). She found that this kind of music moved through Havana via CDs and mp3s that people passed hand to hand. People in more established music industry positions described reggaetón as displaying “bad taste,” artistically, and they rejected it on moral grounds, pointing to the obscenity in its lyrics and the hypersexuality of its culture.

Yet Gámez argued that the amateurism and transgression of reggaetón shouldn’t be dismissed without further exploration. For example, regguetón offered degrees of accessibility: in addition to its alternative production and distribution, its dance style required less space than others (231-232). She wrote that some analysts were already exploring its relation to marginality, a state of existence that prioritizes survival and the present moment, within a context of economic crises (234). Meanwhile, reggaetón’s general disconnect from Cuban socialist values suggested an emergent political identity, one that used “the body as a site of pleasure, personal gain, and social mobility rather than productive, collective labor” (235). Within a longer discussion involving rap and reggaetón in Cuba, Ezekiel Dixon-Román and Wilfredo Gómez expanded on that emphasis on the body. They suggested recognizing that both musical forms existed in a context of frustration among young Cubans about racialized income inequality, aggravated in Cuba in the 1990s and 21st century. They offered this comparison: "While rap cultivates expression and reggaetón claims and exercises ownership of the body, they both do so exceeding and transcending the scope and jurisdiction of the State institutions” (369). Some rappers they interviewed portrayed reggaetón as stepping away from serious social commentary in favor of party culture. The popularity of reggaetón drew ever more attention from commentators, in part because it became a competitor to other styles and scenes, gaining access to the market in ways that other forms had not (375).

In a 2016 opinion essay, cultural commentator Ivan de la Nuez summarized objections common in Cuba: “With few exceptions, reguetonero anthems call more for sex than for revolution, for perreo [a sexualized dance style, grinding, like a dog in heat] more than for protesting” (4, p. 640).

The musical culture was associated with a generation that de la Nuez identified as “the native millennial” in Cuba. So why might a writer of another generation have taken it up and pushed for something other than its “hedonistic catharsis,” the loud banging clubs and street performances so often associated with this musical culture (640)? I didn’t yet have the context to ask a more specific question, which is whether Omar had any intention of addressing what de la Nuez would later write about how the genre played out: “Rather than referring back to one of those utopian projects of Latin American integration, reguetón reveals a West Indian dystopia under which everything that it touches turns into Miami” (641).

Looking backwards now, and at Omar’s poetry as a whole, his poem reads to me mostly as an exploration of how the arts will always gain new potential, with great energy infusions, from two habits of mind: (1) refusing to respect disciplinary divides, and (2) embracing new makers and ideas instead of clinging to institutionality. Perhaps we could call it a poet’s investigation of some utopian possibilities of a form. Keep a technological overlap in mind: like those musicians working with minimal resources, Omar would go to Havana’s home-based recording studios, in this case to make audio recordings of his poems. Musicians in Cuba sought to make the reggaetón form, with its especially strong association with Puerto Rico, a container for their own visions; as a poet, knowing that he had his own lanes to explore, Omar could do the same.

Readers, Facing Gaps in Historical Time

How, in the 2020s, does this musical genre speak to new readers? Many future students won’t have knowledge of that specific history of reggaetón in Cuba, so they will come to this poem through their own time and place. It might be useful to pause and think about their own assumptions about musical cultures, as well as holding their personal expectations at a remove from this poem.

For example, in the past decade, Cuban reggaetón was caught up in public debates about what the arts should do and why—which even influenced a new round of cultural laws and protests. Omar experimented with this popular genre before those events took place. Perhaps, on some level, he intuited that reggaetón music as a total field could speak to audiences in ways that shouldn’t be underestimated, but those specific actions in the arena of national law or politics had not taken place yet. Even setting aside that connection, students may see a connection back to the tensions already in play during reggaetón’s earliest existence in Havana, as an alternative and marginal form.

Or, if students are pursuing literary and interdisciplinary zones, they might focus upon Omar’s constant refusal to let his poetry become sloganeering. One phase of that resistance involves his turns in the twenty-first century. We could hear many of Omar’s poems as a series of questions about how to work at intersections with different fields of the arts. Here’s a short commentary I wrote in 2015 about evolutions and experiments I was seeing from Omar, with links to audio where you can hear him read poems: Mega what? — the audio | Jacket2. On that note of exploring sound, not only reading text, the PennSound audio archive has dedicated a whole page to Omar: PennSound: Omar Pérez (upenn.edu).

Translations (Choose Your Own Trajectory)

The history of reggaetón in Cuba begins with a musical translation: the physical movement of the form into the island, plus the incremental variations that local musicians created, including those who attempted to make the music feel more “Cuban” to them.

As for my delivery of the translation, I did listen to reggaetón, including some of its globally known artists. I thought not only about basics for the page like counting syllables and highlighting rhyme (as well as slant rhyme), but also about how a performer with a strong sense of style could flex the syllables and perform through/around rhythms in a way that alters what you see on the page. Students might consider how they sing along to their favorite songs: how do musicians actually deliver the lyrics?

Because the musical form is associated with masculinity and that, too, impacts performance, I thought about the classic issue for female translators: how do I claim and perform a genre that many audiences would not perceive to even be available to me, for reasons of gender? This can affect the page. In poetry, this issue then gets physical when you go to read somewhere in person. Omar and I never performed this poem together live, and probably never will, but I still kept that idea in mind as I translated.

Sometimes you need to create an unrealistic state of mind to do a translation.

There are many examples of women having to claim a space where their voices and bodies are not deemed authoritative. One way to establish musical strength is in the attack, the way a musician begins by throwing down a strong note/syllable. Percussive letters help with clear, strong articulation. However, some recurring words in this poem lose percussiveness in translation: for example, the “t” for “teorema” becomes a softer and less striking “th” in “theorem.”

Omar’s concept and language are so specific and essential to how I thought of the poem’s workings that I decided to use words like “theorem” even if the attack would be lessened, so I thought of other moments as better grounding the English. “To be or not to be, I think therefore I am” makes use of two philosophical but accessible phrases which a performer can drop in English. They don’t sound strained but natural, allowing for an assertive delivery.

Going beyond this one translation, I’m writing this response a few days after an all-female team refereed a World Cup match for the first time in world history. Having to claim a masculinized space where onlookers will believe you don’t belong—and assert physical authority in the process—remains a real source of tension for women. You have to strategize with body as well as mind. What inner strength would you marshal to step onto the field as one of those referees, and how is their performance also an act of translation?

Women like Ivy Queen and Karol G have contributed to reggaetón and other forms currently clumped under an “urban Latino” marketing label. And before them, one of the world’s best teachers on gender and authoritative performance -- that is, a far better example for students to consider than me -- performed other Cuban/Caribbean/US popular musical fusions. Celia Cruz (1925-2003) claimed her authority and became an international superstar in the fusion form called “salsa” at a time when few women could gain leading roles in the field.

Cruz is also a good touchstone for thinking about how race, class, and geography play through such conversations. Those themes again go beyond the overt content of Omar’s poem but are embedded in conversations and debates around popular music, including reggaetón, so they might be compelling for students interested in music as performance and cultural phenomenon.

Finally, other contemporary poets have been doing terrific spins on what we imagine “translation” to be or do, including when we confront specific forms on the page. T. Urayoán Noel plays with the constraints of various poetic forms as well as displaying nonequivalent and queered translations within his 2021 collection, Transversal. In other words, a poet-translator could approach the structure of a poem by choosing different content for certain lines -- not words selected at random or just to generate a specific rhythm, but words substituted to highlight social commentary about nonequivalent spaces and lives. December 2022

1. The guaguancó is one of many “Cuban musical genres that encompass African thematics and languages,” to borrow a brief summary from Mariela Gutiérrez, who connects the form to Cuban national identity. She locates guaguancó as emerging from Cuba’s son style and later becoming an influence incorporated into the international fusion today known as salsa (296). As for its technical rhythmic features, Fernando Benadon, Andrew McGraw, and Michael Robinson conducted a quantitative study of guagancó drumming wherein five common patterns stand out. Despite these recognizable patterns, they encountered considerable complexity, including regional variations within Cuba as well as “a fluid environment” defying straightforward transcription (n.p.). Given these factors, Benadon et al highlighted an overall structural interplay between stability/repetition and liberation/transformation. More specifically, they concluded that “the ground of restraint” set by guaguancó’s rhythmic structures “is instrumentalized for realizing the figure of freedom, a structure common to many African-diasporic musics” and permeating musical tensions corresponding to histories of oppression (n.p.). See Gutiérrez, Mariela A. “Afro-Cuban Lyrics and Thematics in the ‘Canción Cubana’ as Musical Genre.” Hispanic Research Journal, vol. 14, no. 4, Aug. 2013, pp. 295–312. EBSCOhost, https://doi-org.library.smcvt.... and Benadon, F., McGraw, A., & Robinson, M., “Quantitative analysis of temporal structure in Cuban guaguancó drumming,” Music & Science, vol. 1, 2018, https://doi-org.library.smcvt....
2. Here I’m drawing on an article that will also inform other remarks: “Cuban Youth Culture and Receding Futures: Hip Hop, Reggaetón and Pedagogías Marginal,” by Ezekiel Dixon Román and Wilfredo Gómez, in Pedagogies: An International Journal, vol. 7, no. 4, Oct.-Dec. 2012, 364-379.
3. Torres, Nora Gámez. “Hearing the Change: Reggaeton and Emergent Values in Contemporary Cuba.” Latin American Music Review / Revista de Música Latinoamericana, vol. 33, no. 2, Oct. 2012, pp. 227–60. EBSCOhost, https://search-ebscohost-com.l....
4. Interested readers can find the rest of this opinion essay in English in The Cuba Reader: History, Culture, Politics, 2nd ed., edited by Aviva Chomsky et al, Duke UP, 2019, pp. 639-642. The quotes I’ve used here are from 640-641.

About the Author

Kristin Dykstra

Kristin Dykstra is a writer, literary translator, and scholar. Her poetry collection Dissonance: Its Ridgelines / Disonancia: Perfil de laderas is forthcoming with Rialta in a bilingual edition, tr. Tina Escaja. Dykstra’s translation of Amanda Berenguer’s collection, The Lady of Elche, is forthcoming from Veliz Books in 2023. Dykstra is principal translator of The Winter Garden Photograph, by Reina María Rodríguez, Winner of the 2020 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation and Finalist for the National Translation Award. She has translated several books by Omar Pérez: Cubanology, Did You Hear About the Fighting Cat?, and Something of the Sacred, as well as editing pages with audio and commentary involving Pérez at Jacket2. Dykstra’s own poems appeared recently in Lana Turner 13 and 15, Seedings, Almost Island, Clade Song, The Hopper; bilingually in La Noria, El Nieuwe Acá and Distropika (tr. Escaja), and Acrobata (tr. F. Martins). Her recent translations and reviews appeared in a variety of venues, some of which are Astra, Asymptote, Chicago Review, Big Other, Latin American Literature Today, The Common, Two Lines, and The Rumpus.