Sixteenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

In the 1970s, Puerto Rico’s local government used U.S. Federal Housing funds to disperse working-class and poor families out of visibility by relocating them in segregated social spaces conceptualized in this essay as barrios/caserios. Twenty years later, the youth that were born and raised in those barrios/caserios created a musical style named by themselves as the underground music. Not to be confused with well-known popular music called Reggaeton, the underground music and its lyrics became an expression of the identity, culture, and everyday life experiences of the working-class and poor families living in the barrios/caserios of Puerto Rico. Applying anthropological and philosophy of language approaches, I have interpreted the meaning of many common names and concepts mentioned in the underground music lyrics to discover and analyze their cultural values, ideologies, everyday realities, and their power struggles with government authorities and elite social classes.