It’s Me, a Spanish Chinese-looking Woman Raised by Daddy Yankee and Bad Bunny
I’m sure most of you have danced to Gasolina at least once in your lifetime. Banger. I know. Now imagine seven hours of non-stop reggaeton. Heaven or hell? I choose Limbo, and in between the gas of a Spanish club and the dirty toilets of a techno party is where I exist as a paradox.
I always said I didn’t like to dance. That was a lie I told myself because I felt I didn’t have a sense of rhythm. Turns out it is partly true. When I was thirteen, my PE teacher made us dance bachata as the “sport” for that semester. As much as it might sound romantic and all, the reality was a bunch of clumsy teenagers trying to figure out whose arms and legs belonged to whom. I felt like a stranger to my own body, my long limbs unknown to me after the summer, floppy and ungraceful; my feet unable to follow a simple beat. This was the beginning of my tumultuous love-hate relationship with dancing.
Like most Spanish people my age, I grew up surrounded by an increasingly prominent reggaeton culture coming from Puerto Rico or Colombia. I was basically raised by Daddy Yankee and Bad Bunny. Despite a part of me always felt disconnected from this music and its lyrics, which I felt objectified me as a woman (I know, I was an intense kid), I still couldn’t help but dance to it, and, to some extent, enjoy the music of a culture that I felt my own, that was my own. However, as I entered my young adulthood, I also started to gain consciousness about my race. I was adopted from China when I was seven months and was always aware that my physical traits were different from my family and friends. Because I was adopted as a baby, I never had any contact with Chinese culture and language. And yet, my nationality, who my parents were, and my identity were constantly put under question. Suddenly, I was filled with an inner urge to prove that I was Spanish. And I found dancing to be my live testimony.
Dancing became a performance, one I exercised poorly, but one I couldn’t get past. Because to dance was to belong to a place, to a certain people. Even for the span of three minutes, even when I felt that my body had long abandoned me, I could fit in and prove I was cut by the same pattern. I was not Chinese, I was Spanish to the core, and no one would question my identity. What I wasn’t realising, is that this cut was ripping me apart from the inside. Dancing for me did not come from a natural place anymore; it was a form of reassurance, a proof that I was Spanish enough, that I was Spanish at all. I didn’t know that enjoyment for music had to come from within, that it wasn’t an exam for anything. I didn’t know because from that first bachata lesson, dancing became a test. But for me, this test was not about my skills, but about my identity. Dancing is a performance, and I didn’t know that by performing to the wrong beat, I was losing myself in the process.
When I moved to Amsterdam, I was so relieved I could get away from my personal reggaeton Inferno. Finally, I felt I could qualify as an above-the-average dancer by simply shaking my arm to the sky to one techno song after the other. I could dance for the sake of it, without needing to prove anything to anyone. More than relieved, I was happy because for some reason many people started to approach me to compliment my dancing skills. I was blossoming, and I was doing it far away from reggaeton, which as you might have realised by now, I deeply resented.
Amsterdam was where I belonged, or so I thought. However, a few months in, I found myself coming back to the repetitive yet familiar drum base or the highly autotuned of reggaeton during my bike ride home, getting ready for school, or studying. I found myself missing things I never thought I would miss; the loudness of the people or having to dress up for the club. But most of all I missed my friends and our silly laughs jumping around and running down the streets of Madrid holding hands like crazy maniacs. Now I find myself asking my friends for recommendations to keep up with the new releases and I’m the first one to propose going out to dance when I’m back home. Most of the times we won’t catch up for weeks, but sharing music keeps us close. Against all odds, reggaeton holds my back and keeps me warm when I miss home (and everyone knows how much I need this warmth to help me cope with the Dutch winter).
Most things change (except for my dancing skills), and they do when we least expect it. While still navigating my identity and my place in this world, now I know this is not something others have to give you, or you must earn. As I embrace my origin and my upbringing, I finally release the breath I didn’t know I was holding and allow myself to dance free. Most things change, my tastes, my hobbies or where I live. But this doesn’t mean the place I used to call home stops being so. My culture, my language, my traits, my music will always travel with me, however contradictory they might seem. And this is where I will always exist as a paradox.
