The rap on the raperos.

• Author: Holston, Mark
• Position: Americas !Ojo!

It has vibrated out of the streets and is today nudging tropical music aside on many dance floors in Latin America. Behind the facade of the brash, defiant spirit of youth, it echoes many of the values and trends that have gone before it. It is Latin rap music. From the sweaty barrios of Colon, Panama, to the upper class discos of Mexico City, it is being heard with a regularity that would have surprised even the music's most ardent proponents just a year ago.

The storytelling quality of rap has its origins in the 1950s and the innovative style of New York City's Puerto Rican street poets, who helped pioneer the Doo-Wop movement. Doo-Wop singers used their voices as instruments because the young artists frequently lacked funds to buy bass guitars and drums. Throughout the '60s and '70s, musical ideas flowed freely between the Afro-americans and Latin communities in the U.S., leading to such musical hybrids as the soulful Bugalu. Today's rap movement represents the evolution of that sharing between the two groups, a reality that has been hastened globally thanks to the instant dissemination of popular culture.

The phenomenon has produced overnight stars. Ecuador's Gerardo, a resident of Los Angeles, has captured the "soft rap" market with his male model charm and wholesome, family-oriented lifestyle. Others, like the sexy Puerto Rican rapera Naomi, infuse a healthy dose of double...