Brief history of reggaeton
The music genre reggaeton is the international name given to Spanish Reggae that was born in Panama. One of the first pioneers in this Spanish Reggae was the musician El General. His real name is Edgar Franco and he claims to have been singing since he was 10 years old. He started listening to reggae around 1978, when he was part of a band called “Renato y las cuatro estrellas”. They would take the instrumental records coming from Jamaica and speed up the revolutions per minute and add Spanish lyrics.
The Spanish Reggae started spreading throughout the Caribbean and evolved to what we know today as reggaeton. One of the places of most importance during that expansion was Puerto Rico. It is possible to state that the reggaeton was commercialized over there for the first time.
