My Hips Shake at the End of the World

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It's been a while, sorry about that. I wasn't sure what to write this column about given the ongoing onslaught of horrors in the past few weeks. I fumbled around with ideas about protest music or anthems against oppression but came up short when it finally came to put pen to page. The Bay Area has a strong history of protest music and songs echoing through the hearts of those who believe in the world to win. When I put my ear to the ether I couldn't hear those songs clearly, they came back muddled and mixed with the screams of children in detention centers. A chorus of ICE agents snatching children, Palestinian families freezing in tents, Venezuelans in the streets — a world screaming with the boot on its neck. It all made me so angry and anguished that I became embalmed in a rage so old it's been forced to change its tongue by those in power.

I sat in this state for weeks until, in one of the few horrid doomscrolls I allow myself a week, I saw a viral video of a DJ in the Oakland-based Lower Grand Radio studio spinning "perreo x daft punk." In the video a DJ, MARACUYá, weaves together a Daft Punk sample and a perreo, a style of Puerto Rican reggaeton music, track to create a song you can lose yourself in. I was so moved by the clip that I hunted down the mix it came from  MARACUYá’s guest "cyber perreo mix" on local DJ mare.e.fresh's monthly Lower Grand show.

I listened to the whole mix and found myself contemplating the “protest song” through the lens of movement. That is to say I started to think about how in the Global South songs against oppression rarely channel the Western punk or aggressive sound, instead they offer soundtracks to movement. That movement here took the form of a hip sway and bounce, a two step, and an enthusiastic “oh shit, Persona” shout as MARACUYá weaved together jungle, Soulja Boy, and a song from the Shin Megami Tensei – Persona 4 soundtrack. As I moved my body across my overpriced Oakland studio, I felt pangs of guilt as if my joy could be seen as acquiescence, cowardice, or a “political unseriousness” in the moment. These pangs prompted me to search for something within Bay Area music that mirrored these thoughts of mine and, because the Bay is like that, I found something.

Forty years ago, San Jose, California based corrido band Los Tigres Del Norte put out a full length record titled Gracias!...America... Sin Fronteras, a tongue-in-cheek politically charged album about “American-ness” during the rise of the failed War on Drugs. In the title track, Los Tigres lament about the peculiar struggle of being “American” during a period of rampant xenophobia and early conservative culture wars. They sing: “Del color de la tierra yo he nacido / Por herencia mi idioma es castellano (De América) / Los del norte dicen que soy latino (Yo soy) / No me quieren decir Americano” over their signature corrido sound which can only get you up on your feet. The song IS political but it also calls you to move. My favorite part of the song is a call-and-response where Los Tigres just shout out countries in Latin America in harmony with the chorus “De America, yo soy” chant. I can’t help but smile as Mexico and Uruguay (my paternal and maternal homelands) get their nods. Ultimately, the album poses the question: just what the fuck is an American? 

Across the Bay from my home in Oakland, Puerto Rico’s pride Bad Bunny also tackled issues of national identity during his Super Bowl half time show. Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio aka Bad Bunny presented a slice of Puerto Rican subculture to the audience of one of the American empire's foundational cultural landmarks, American football, with nods to both historical struggles (Puerto Rico’s colonial history and abandonment during Hurricane Maria) and contemporary plights against ICE.

I am not naive enough to think this will turn the tides of the ruling class towards liberation nor do I think the NFL's hollow "love over hate" semiotics mean much to ease the systematic abuses of Brown and Black people in this country. There was an invisible hand of marketing, brand strategy, and "synergy" at work on the field for sure, yet I am still heartened to know that even if Bad Bunny's performance is ensnared in status-quo identity politics Latinos and Caribbean people still got to really piss off some fascists. In his Grammy award acceptance speech Martínez Ocasio ended his “ICE out” remark with “we are all Americans” much like Los Tigres before. Again I ask, what the fuck is an American?

It is powerful to tap the sonic guerrilla war raging in the speakers across the Global South and that lineage has roots here in the Bay. Listening to perreo, cumbia, dembow, reggaeton, reggae, dub, dancehall, salsa, bachata, the list goes on and on, is a political act. Some may offer some caveats to that statement but when you listen close to their rhythms you can find freedom in their movement. Perhaps the US's fear of Brown and Black people lies in our hips, moving to sounds so old they've seen multiple empires fall and so new they will surely see this one fall too.  

Addendum: On Monday, February 9, 2026, The City & County of San Francisco marked February 9th as “Los Tigres del Norte Day.”