Shawn Reynaldo is a Barcelona-based writer and editor who specializes in electronic music. His First Floor newsletter often zeroes in on developments in the genre’s corresponding industry and culture, but the Second Floor column is designed to spotlight the music itself, examining trends, recommending releases, and keeping tabs on what’s happening both on and off the dancefloor.

During the past few years, the dance music world has fallen in love with Latin sounds … again. The explosion of genres like reggaeton, guaracha, cumbia, raptor house, and Brazilian funk (a.k.a baile funk) onto fashionable European and North American dancefloors is often described as a new phenomenon, but as I laid out in part one of this column, something similar took place nearly two decades ago. (As it happens, I myself was a key contributor to this particular scene, and actively worked to foster its spread.)

What began with gringo DJs and intrepid bloggers taking an interest in Brazilian baile funk and Argentinian cumbia blossomed into a full-blown trend, and by the end of the 2000s, active “tropical bass” and “global bass” hubs had emerged San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin, and a number of other cities around the US. Yet if there was one place that served as a proper counterbalance to what was happening west of the Mississippi, it was New York City, which put its own stamp on the phenomenon.

New York Tropical

DJ /rupture hadn’t grown up listening to cumbia, but the academically-minded turntablist, experimental musician, and producer did have a longstanding interest in the rhythm cultures of the Global South. His widely celebrated 2001 mixtape, Gold Teeth Thief, had thrillingly combined breakcore, ragga, Arabic folk and a litany of other sounds, and as the global conversation around cumbia began to intensify in the latter half of the 2000s, he became a vocal champion of the genre, both in his writing and his DJ sets. In 2007, he traveled to Buenos Aires to experience the music first hand, and penned an influential FADER article about the city’s cumbia scene that included the ZZK crew, famed local digger Sonido Martines, and legendary cumbia villera outfit Damas Gratis.

Back home in NYC, rupture joined forces with fellow low-end fanatic Matt Shadetek to launch Dutty Artz, a label, collective, and blog that took inspiration from not just cumbia, but a wide variety of African, Latin, and Caribbean sounds. Key early contributors included Chief Boima, a Bay Area-based Sierra Leonean-American DJ, activist, and writer who held a residency at West African nightclub in San Francisco called Little Baobab; Lamin Fofana, who’d grown up in Guinea and Sierra Leone but at the time was living in NYC and making African-infused dance music; and Jahdan Blakkamoore, a Guyanese reggae and dancehall vocalist.

Elsewhere in the city, Uproot Andy—whose Bersa Discos #4 EP spawned multiple anthems in the nascent tropical bass circuit—joined forces with a DJ named Geko Jones to launch Que Bajo?!, a club night that wound up being one of the closest analogs to what Oro11 and I were doing with our Tormenta Tropical parties on the West Coast. But Que Bajo?! did have its own distinct flavor, one that reflected the large Puerto Rican, Dominican, and Venezuelan populations in New York City. (Translation: they played less cumbia than we did.)

On more of a hybrid dancehall tip, NYC also had Mixpak. Set up by Dre Skull in 2009, the label put itself on the map with records by Vybz Kartel and Sizzla, but it also issued releases by New Orleans bounce hero Sissy Nobby, Atlanta rapper Lil Scrappy, and Miami transplant Jubilee, who was often touted as “Brooklyn’s bass queen.” Before long, Dre Skull also invited Dubbel Dutch into the Mixpak fold. A Long Island native who’d actually been living in Austin when the Peligrosa crew was getting underway, he was an immensely talented producer and an avid student of dance music from both sides of the Atlantic. The Mixpak deal brought him to NYC, and during his time with the label, he wound up producing multiple tracks for Popcaan, including “Everything Nice,” which is still one of the Jamaican artist’s most enduring tunes.

Mutations at the Speed of the Internet

The musical diversity of New York’s global bass scene was something that gradually took root everywhere, as other sounds, both traditional and modern, increasingly entered the fray. Reggaeton, bachata, merengue, champeta, salsa, soca, dancehall, kuduro, funana, bubblin, batida—that’s just a partial list of the genres explored, and this sonic expansion also made it easier to welcome additional artists into the tent. Prominent new arrivals included Montreal dancehall disruptor Poirier, Portuguese kuduro alchemists Buraka Som Sistema, German bass agitators Schlachthofbronx, London-based West African pop experimenters The Very Best, and Chilean minimal techno alum Matías Aguayo, who’d set off on a wildly inventive, and unmistakably Latin, path with his newly founded Cómeme label.

Yet when it came to pure innovation, it was hard to top the tribal guarachero sounds coming out of Mexico. A bouncy style of Mexican dance music with lurching rhythms that are often said to sound like they’re tripping over themselves, the genre was a hybrid of cumbia, guaracha, house, techno, and assorted pre-Hispanic sounds (e.g. flutes, drums, etc.) that first came together in the mid 2000s. Mexico City, home to early adopters like DJ Mouse and Manuel Palafox, was tribal guarachero’s birthplace, but it was in Monterrey, nearly 500 miles to the north, where it became a full-fledged phenomenon. The music itself was obviously a big part of that, but it also helped that the scene’s distinctive botas picudas (“pointy boots”) became a global fashion curiosity. At the center of the storm was a trio of teenagers, Erick Rincón, DJ Otto, and Sheeqo Beat, who together formed the group 3Ball MTY, scored a major-label deal, and became tribal guarachero’s first pop crossover act. (Oddly enough, their signature song, 2011’s “Inténtalo,” became an international smash, but it was never really embraced by the tropical bass set, who preferred the trio’s rawer, weirder early material.)

Back in the States, the trajectory of global bass took a particularly unexpected turn in Washington DC, thanks to a house and club DJ (and former punk rocker) named Dave Nada. According to lore, he was persuaded by a young cousin to DJ at a high school house party, and after realizing that everyone else was playing reggaeton and bachata music, he decided to pitch down the Dutch house tracks he had on hand—beginning with Afrojack's remix of Silvio Ecomo and Chuckie’s “Moombah!"—to 108 bpm. Nada claimed that the crowd on hand instantly went bananas, which prompted him to continue tinkering with the formula, and in 2010, he released an EP, Moombahton, which showcased his discovery.

The EP was a big hit in the blogosphere, and a new, albeit wholly invented, genre was born. Practically overnight, SoundCloud producers around the world started making their own moombahton tracks, and the style quickly became so popular that it splintered into multiple variants, including moobahcore and moombahsoul. Munchi, a Dominican producer raised in Rotterdam, became one of the nascent genre’s first breakout stars—he was also one of the first people to move the sound beyond its edit-centric origins—and he was soon joined by David Heartbreak, a former rapper from NYC who threw himself headlong into moombahton and perhaps made more tunes in the style than anyone else. Still, it was Nada who remained at the center of the moombahton universe. Alongside his production partner Matt Nordstrom—the two worked together under the name Nadastrom—and Bersa Discos affiliate Sabo (who also had his own label, Sol Selectas), he launched a party called Moombahton Massive in October 2010, which rapidly became one of DC’s most popular club nights.

Moombahton had inadvertently connected the dots between Latin/Caribbean rhythms and EDM, but as it grew, the music increasingly gravitated toward the latter half of that equation. Co-signs from artists like Diplo and Skrillex—who actually brought Nadastrom on tour—certainly accelerated that process, and Dillon Francis, whose EDM star was just beginning to ascend at the time, was another high-profile supporter. Yet moombahton ultimately had a limited shelf life. The creeping brofication of the genre had turned off many of the hipsters and Latin music heads, and after a few years, the EDM kids started jumping ship as well, with a sizable chunk turning their attentions to trap music instead. Elements of moombahton did eventually surface in a number of mid-2010s pop hits, but by the time those songs from Major Lazer, Justin Bieber, and (arguably) Drake hit the charts, the genre itself was more or less considered to be dead.

The Fizzling of a Trend, and the Emergence of Something Promising

The moombahton roller coaster was especially dramatic, but a similar fate ultimately befell the entire tropical/global bass movement. While the internet had enabled this unorthodox scene to rapidly come together in a way that wouldn’t have been possible even a decade prior, that scene was never really tied to a cohesive, real-world music community. Tropical/global bass was more of an overarching aesthetic umbrella than a traditional genre, and many of the people participating were outsiders, in the sense that they didn’t come from the cultures whose music they were playing and experimenting with. And even when people with actual Latin, Caribbean, or African heritage were involved, they were often second-generation kids who’d maybe grown up hearing the music at family parties, but weren’t necessarily died-in-the-wool cumbieros, reggaetoneros, etc. That didn’t mean that their enthusiasm was disingenuous, but when the hype around the scene they’d built began to fade, their primary social circles—which tended to consist of DJs, culturally savvy music heads, and other tastemaker types—rarely stuck around for the long haul. 

Of course, the disintegration of tropical bass and global bass didn’t happen all at once. I personally left Bersa Discos and Tormenta Tropical in 2013, but Oro11 kept them going until 2018. Over in New York, both Que Bajo!? and Dutty Artz called it quits around the same time, and while Mixpak still exists and puts out the occasional record, Dre Skull has largely transitioned to producing for other artists. His former associate Dubbel Dutch wound up doing the same thing, but after experiencing intense burnout and even more intense poverty, he dropped out of music entirely in 2018, and only re-emerged a few months ago, in Hawaii of all places. The Peligrosa crew continue to do their thing in Austin, and oversee what is likely the longest-running tropical bass party in the world, and ZZK, the Buenos Aires party that first put cumbia digital on the map, is also still alive and kicking. The label is now based in Los Angeles, and its curatorial vision has expanded significantly, looking beyond cumbia while platforming artists from throughout Latin America. More than 15 years into its run, the ZZK catalog includes records by Mexican marimba-punks Son Rompe Pera, Bolivian folk icon Luzmila Carpio, and Ecuadorian electronic producer Nicola Cruz.

The terms tropical bass and global bass have fallen out of fashion, but cumbia, baile funk, and most of the other genres they were associated with are doing just fine. (Considering that most of those genres were thriving before any gringos on the internet took notice, it’s not terribly surprising that they continued to hum along after the trend-hoppers went elsewhere.) Moreover, the music has continued to evolve, and more often than not, the most exciting new iterations are coming directly from Latin, Caribbean, and African artists themselves. Although Europeans and North Americans still tend to control the global narrative, they’re at least starting to realize that when it comes to music from the Global South, people from that part of the world, or who are at least members of its diaspora, should be protagonists in the story being told.

There remains plenty of room for improvement. European and North American audiences continue to treat genres from the Global South as disposable trends, and often fail to see cultures from that part of the world as anything but a monolith. And thanks to a myriad of structural, social, and financial barriers, members of the Latin, Caribbean, and African diasporas who live in Europe and North America still have a far easier time forging connections and finding success than their contemporaries who are actually based in the regions that birthed these sounds in the first place. Even so, the fact that the contemporary electronic music landscape includes N.A.A.F.I in Mexico, TraTraTrax in Colombia, Nyege Nyege in Uganda, and countless other crews, not to mention artists like South Africa’s DJ Lag and Mexico’s Siete Catorce, is something worth celebrating—and building upon.

Looking back, tropical and global bass were undeniably flawed, but they still made a serious impact, one that reflected the harsh inequalities of the North-South divide while also producing a lot of great tunes. The history of those tunes has already been half-forgotten, and while this column may help to combat that, showcasing the music itself is potentially an even more effective way to demonstrate what these scenes were all about. Given that, I’ve dug through my archives and put together a sampling of some of the Latin-flavored songs and releases that defined the era.

Chancha Vía Circuito - Río Arriba 

[ZZK]

Although the hype around electro-cumbia and cumbia digital was largely driven by DJs, one of the genre’s most talented producers was Chancha Vía Circuito, whose loping, psychedelic tunes often lingered at the edge of the dancefloor. An Argentinian producer and a first-generation ZZK artist, he actually used to work the merch table at the crew’s early parties. Still it was his own music, with its patiently chugging grooves and many nods to South American folklórico, that truly stood out; once his debut album Río Arriba arrived in 2010, the accolades poured in, and not just from cumbia freaks and DJs glued to the blogosphere. Pitchfork and NPR took notice—something which basically never happened with this sort of music, even when the excitement around cumbia was at its height. A few years later, LP opener “Quimey Neuquén,” a remix of a song by Argentinian folk hero José Larralde, was prominently featured in an episode of Breaking Bad. Since then, he’s released several more albums, and has expanded the scope of the project via collaborations with a variety of vocalists and musicians. Yet there’s something special about going back and hearing Chancha Vía Circuito at his most humble; on Río Arriba, he was making his own magic.

Uproot Andy - “El Botellón”

[Bersa Discos]

For those in need of something geared toward the club, few producers in the tropical bass circuit were more reliable than Uproot Andy. A Canadian who also held down a weekly DJ residency at a Bulgarian bar, he wasn’t the likeliest of candidates to take up the tropical bass mantle, but Andy’s passion ran deep, particularly when it came to Colombian sounds. “El Botellón,” one of three tracks he contributed to 2008’s Bersa Discos #4, was essentially a bootleg rework of a song by Grupo Naidy, a band devoted to the Afro-Colombian sounds of the country’s Pacific coast. And though he kept the original’s plinking marimba melodies and stirring vocals, he significantly punched up the low end, employing a chunky bassline as he cranked the song’s percussive smack.

Maluca - “El Tigeraso”

[Mad Decent]

A Dominican born and raised in NYC, Maluca personifies the multifaceted nature of growing up Afro-Latina in the US. Connecting the dots between the fashion world, the glory days of Downtown club culture, the swagger of hip-hop, and the gyrating rhythms of the Caribbean, she has always been a unique talent. The artist burst onto the scene in 2009 with “El Tigeraso,” a Diplo-produced—the two had met by chance doing karaoke at a club where Maluca was working—blast of uptempo electro-merengue that instantly became a classic in the tropical bass circuit and beyond. With its rapid-fire beats and brazen horn blasts, the track is oozing with confidence, but it’s Maluca herself who commands the spotlight, the streetwise bravado of her Spanglish vocals making it clear that she’s not going to take any shit from anyone.

DJ Panik - SUPER CUMBIA BROS. VOL. 1

[Self-released]

At some point in the mid 2000s, DJ Panik realized just how well chopped-up cumbia accordion riffs paired with the trunk-rattling rhythms of Southern rap. The Mexican producer, who hailed from the Dallas suburbs, repurposed bits of DJ UNK, Lil Jon, Pitbull, Lil Scrappy, Big Tuck in a blazing, hour-long DJ mix he called SUPER CUMBIA BROS. VOL.1. Originally circulated via a series of self-released CDs, his work—which also included crunked-up versions of assorted Latin classics—started out as a purely Texan phenomenon. Once his mixes hit the internet, though, the potency of what he’d created was undeniable to folks like Bersa Discos co-founder Oro11, who was doing similar things with his own cumbia edits. He reached out to Panik, inquiring if the producer had unmixed versions of the tracks from SUPER CUMBIA BROS., and after some back and forth, three of his tunes wound up on 2008’s Bersa Discos #3, a split release with Chancha Vía Circuito.

Los Rakas feat. Faviola - “Abrazame (Uproot Andy Hold Yuh Refix)”

[Self-released]

During the summer of 2010, Gyptian’s dancehall anthem “Hold Yuh” was practically inescapable, and the phenomenon was amplified by the ease with which its nursery-rhyme-like riddim could be combined with just about anything. “Abrazame” was one such application, and while it was produced by Uproot Andy, it was voiced by Raka Rich, one half of Oakland-based Afro-Panamanian duo Los Rakas. (The other half of the duo, Raka Dun, is Rich’s literal cousin.) The group have gone on to score a Grammy nomination, and their self-titled 2016 album was released by Universal Latino, but for most of their career, they’ve been fully independent, bouncing between the worlds of hip-hop, reggaeton, and tropical bass, all with an obvious star quality. That quality definitely comes through on “Abrazame,” a Spanish-language dancehall-R&B hybrid that in truth is a straight-up love song, albeit one that has more than enough bounce to work in the club.