The Trouble With Bad Bunny’s Puerto Rico Takeover

Since at the very least the eleventh century in Europe, when troubadour musicians crisscrossed the continent singing songs of affection and chivalry, one factor has remained pretty constant: The artist travels; the viewers stays put. After all, there have been exceptions, through which followers made pilgrimages to see their favourite musicians stay. 1000’s descended on Woodstock in 1969, and hundreds extra nonetheless attend Coachella and different festivals; surging numbers of individuals have additionally lately been collaborating in “live performance tourism”—hopping flights to catch touring artists comparable to Taylor Swift in different cities, the place tickets is perhaps cheaper.The Puerto Rican artist Dangerous Bunny’s residency in San Juan, titled “No me quiero ir de aquí” (“I don’t need to go away right here”), although, felt like a recent proposition: not a tour or pageant, however an intentional invitation for followers to come back on to his doorstep for repeated performances in the identical place. Dangerous Bunny plans to tour his newest album, Debí Tirar Más Fotos, beginning later this yr. (He’s notably skipping any live performance dates within the continental United States, partially due to his fear that, with a excessive variety of Latinos anticipated at his exhibits, “ICE might be exterior,” as he put it in a single interview.) However first, he determined to camp out on the El Choli enviornment in Puerto Rico for 10 weeks this summer time, performing tracks from throughout his whole repertoire. Droves of followers visited Puerto Rico for the exhibits. Their resolution to journey to the island feels totally different from, say, selecting to see Taylor Swift in Amsterdam or Bruno Mars on the Vegas Strip—selections that is perhaps extra concerning the live performance itself than the placement.Learn: Dangerous Bunny has all of it—and that is the problemCombining a trip and a Dangerous Bunny live performance was an attractive alternative for a lot of devotees, who hoped to take in the island that’s so central to his inventive id. After I visited San Juan to see one of many exhibits final month, I spoke with attendees who’d flown in from places comparable to Florida, New Jersey, and Ohio, in addition to from different international locations comparable to Colombia. I heard a standard sentiment—that watching a musician in his personal factor, as he needed them to, seemed like a one-of-a-kind escapade.Name it a brand new model of live performance tourism: a hyper-immersive live-music expertise on an artist’s house turf, akin to a pop-up store on steroids. Throughout the residency, followers may take footage the place Dangerous Bunny bagged groceries earlier than discovering fame. They might swim within the seashores he sings about, see the foliage from his newest album cowl in full bloom, and go to a quasi-museum of Dangerous Bunny paraphernalia at a San Juan mall, replete with behind-the-scenes lore and exorbitantly priced merch.But Dangerous Bunny’s resolution to host his exhibits in San Juan additionally had an uneasy layer of irony baked into it. By dubbing the occasion “I don’t need to go away,” he additionally essentially meant You all have to come back right here. This journey prerequisite entails complexity for a spot like Puerto Rico, which is already battling water shortages, the aftermath of Hurricane Erin, and rising housing costs due partially to the event of luxurious leases for vacationers. (Tourism reportedly accounts for about 2 % of Puerto Rico’s GDP, although different figures counsel its contribution might be even greater; actual property and leases are additionally billed because the second-largest contributor to Puerto Rico’s economic system, at 19 %.) Puerto Rico is only one of many locations—amongst them Hawaii, Portugal, and the Dominican Republic—which might be caught in a tourism trade-off: weighing the financial advantages and jobs that the business can deliver towards its potential threats to cultural preservation, the atmosphere, and housing markets, amongst different issues.Quique Cabanillas for The AtlanticBad Bunny is clearly conscious of this pressure. In his music, he usually sings about tourism with a compassionate however vital eye, as within the music “Turista,” through which he compares a lover to a vacationer who “solely noticed the most effective of me, and never how I used to be struggling.” And though his residency drew in roughly 600,000 folks from exterior of Puerto Rico this summer time, he reserved the primary three weeks of exhibits solely for Puerto Rico residents. Concertgoers from exterior the island may solely attend later. (This week, he additionally introduced a shock ultimate efficiency for tonight; solely followers residing in Puerto Rico can go in-person, though it is going to even be livestreamed worldwide.) That the residency supplied a cultural getaway as an add-on expertise for his fandom, nevertheless, reveals the trickiness of mixing artwork with tourism.The present I attended started when a torrential downpour ended. I arrived at El Choli early. Individuals adjusted their pava hats and clip-on flor de maga flowers, Puerto Rican symbols that made up the night’s implicit gown code. On the stage screens, a slideshow of info about Puerto Rican historical past performed—tidbits about Taíno historic figures like Agüeybaná and reminders of the island’s independence motion. The sector was thick with a way of native satisfaction; one author for the Puerto Rican newspaper El Vocero described Dangerous Bunny’s present because the work of a modern-day saint, exorcising from the Puerto Rican collective physique the demons of “cynicism, worry of the longer term, cultural apathy, and the poisonous concept that what’s ours, what’s Puerto Rican, is much less useful.”Puerto Ricans have had loads of causes to really feel cynical lately. Hurricane María devastated the island in 2017, killing practically 3,000 folks there, and eight years later, some locals are nonetheless recovering. As a U.S. territory, the island lacks financial sovereignty. The island’s price range is managed by an unelected board that many Puerto Ricans have nicknamed “La Junta,” made up of seven folks appointed and fired by the U.S. president at will. In 2023, nearly 42 % of Puerto Ricans lived under the federal poverty line. And, as Dangerous Bunny himself has usually famous, a significant concern for a lot of Puerto Ricans is gentrification, fueled by tax incentives and the island’s fame as a cryptocurrency haven that prioritizes international traders over locals. As rich people, together with celebrities comparable to Logan Paul, transfer to the island or purchase up properties to become Airbnbs, housing costs have soared; a member of the family of mine who lives within the area of Isabela instructed me that a lot of his Puerto Rican neighbors have relocated, their houses bought to mainland People.Quique Cabanillas for The AtlanticQuique Cabanillas for The AtlanticAgainst this backdrop, quite a few tales have interpreted Dangerous Bunny’s residency as a salve for Puerto Rico’s wounds, noting that the exhibits have been anticipated to inject $250 million into the island’s economic system. But one Puerto Rican couple from San Juan that I spoke with on the live performance, Garvin Sierra and Odalis Gómez, have been skeptical that this spending could be something greater than a short lived boon. The concert events would create an financial increase this summer time, they conceded, however “it will later go away, and a void will return,” Sierra instructed me. Sierra additionally anxious that the residency may merely encourage extra folks to maneuver to the island, as some concertgoers have mused about doing in interviews. That would feed into Puerto Rico’s current housing disaster, Sierra argued—particularly if the present tax incentives stay.Learn: Let Puerto Rico be freeThe residency’s reliance on tourism poses extra apparent potential points. Any monetary growth achieved via tourism may include a caveat: One United Nations web site reviews that solely about 20 % of all tourism spending within the Caribbean really stays within the area. By way of a course of often known as “tourism leakage,” vacationers’ {dollars} find yourself benefiting foreign-owned companies comparable to airways, short-term-rental house owners, and main resort chains greater than locals. Many concertgoers additionally relied on Airbnbs, which sat awkwardly with the themes of Dangerous Bunny’s newest album: In his music video for “Turista,” for example, the artist cleans up after a messy group of backpackers in what’s ostensibly a trip rental. After all, followers aren’t accountable for tourism’s potential drawbacks primarily based on the place they select to sleep. (Full disclosure: I used to be in a position to keep at a relative’s condominium in San Juan for the live performance, however had this feature not been accessible, I doubtless would have stayed at a rental or resort too.) Any critique of tourism is perhaps higher served by specializing in authorities insurance policies reasonably than particular person vacationers. As Dangerous Bunny sings of a vacationer who’s turned a blind eye to the island’s troubles: “It wasn’t your house to heal them / You got here to have a very good time / And we had fun.”Quique CabanillasMeanwhile, on the live performance, company sponsors additionally tried to get in on the Dangerous Bunny tourism economic system, by seeming to Puerto Rico–fy themselves: T-Cellular handed out bandanas inscribed with moka pots, roosters, and an enormous pink T. A Wendy’s kiosk bought a Puerto Rican tripleta sandwich. Within the El Choli bogs, Technique, the self-proclaimed “unique physique wash and hand wash sponsor” of the residency, distributed “isla version” soaps smelling of passionfruit and hibiscus. A few of this company funding does appear to be redirected to locals; Wendy’s, for one, is donating some earnings to a Puerto Rican training program. But the way in which these large manufacturers packaged and bought Puerto Rican meals, music, and symbols carried with it a barely empty, disingenuous air—the nuances of Caribbean tradition distilled right into a marketable aesthetic. (Dangerous Bunny’s present isn’t alone on this; cultural commodification is, to an extent, an inevitable a part of any main live performance, given steep prices and the blank-slate constraints of a stage. Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter” tour didn’t current a superbly layered depiction of Texas, for instance; its manufacturing design boiled southern life all the way down to some touchstones—whiskey, chaps, a cowboy hat.)That’s to not say that the live performance felt hole. It was an inventive achievement, rooted in cultural reclamation and appreciation—a greater than three-hour romp via reggaeton, plena, and salsa rhythms. The set sentimentally evoked the Puerto Rican countryside in miniature: a verdant mountaintop, a flamboyán tree, a flat-roofed pink home. All through the residency, Dangerous Bunny gave different Puerto Rican artists their flowers, sharing the stage with performers such because the early-aughts reggaeton diva Ivy Queen and the hand-drum-pounding quartet Los Pleneros de la Cresta. The viewers on the present I went to spanned generations: Within the row in entrance of me, 20-somethings grinded towards one another throughout Dangerous Bunny’s perreo numbers; to my aspect, a pair of their 70s danced salsa. Lights flashed and voices screamed together with “La Mudanza”: “Yo soy de P-fucking-R!” “It has united the tradition and the nation in some ways,” Sierra instructed me. “Proper now, everybody feels very Boricua.”Quique CabanillasStill, as a column in El Vocero put it, “there’s a distinction between tradition as celebration and tradition as transformation.” Dangerous Bunny could sing concerning the island’s trials, however, the author Pedro Blanco argued, “the true query isn’t what Benito does along with his platform” (Dangerous Bunny’s actual identify is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio); it’s “what we do with the power that his music and spectacle generates.”Within the meantime, waves of followers continued to pour into San Juan’s airport because the summer time waned. After I stepped out of El Choli after the present I attended, I may already see the following aircraft slicing via a cloudy sky, able to ship a recent batch of admirers to Dangerous Bunny’s beloved Puerto Rico.