It Seems Rosalía is Dropping A Bachata Track — & People Have Thoughts
Rosalía teased what seems to be an upcoming bachata song on TikTok Tuesday afternoon, which stirred up some strong reactions.
The video features the Barcelona-born performer lip-syncing and dancing to the beat of the bachata track from a living room. There was no caption for the post, but users were quick to call out the never-released song. Some even wondered if this was part of a collaboration, with one user asking if it’s possible that bachata band Aventura is involved. They recently dropped a track with Bad Bunny titled “Volvi,” which hit No. 1 on the Hot Latin Songs Chart.
Before getting into the outrage, let’s step into some history. Bachata is a genre of romantic music that originated in the Dominican Republic. According to the book Bachata: A Social History of a Dominican Popular Music by Deborah Pacini Hernandez, bachata emerged from the DR in the 1960s and was associated with “poor rural migrants residing in urban shantytowns” before it was “embraced by all classes of Dominican society.”
Some of the most popular bachata artists and bands performing today include Dominican-American Romeo Santos, Dominican-American singer Prince Royce and Dominican singer Alexandra Cabrera de la Cruz, formerly of Monchy & Alexandra fame.
Now, back to Rosalia: Many fans of the genre are not thrilled that a Spanish music artist — especially one who has been called out in the past — is stepping into a traditional style. Even Rosalia fans weren’t feeling her latest music sample and were even less pleased that she was doing it on October 12, the National Day of Spain.
Others joked that if her next album is all bachata, it will start a war.
Rosalía singing bachata comes a few days after Spanish rapper C Tangana and Argentine singer Nathy Peluso were called out on social media for releasing their bachata track “Ateo.”
We’ll have to wait and see if this track is a collaboration or even going to be released. Still, it’d be interesting to see what Rosalía says about experimenting with a genre that holds significant history but has also failed to include its origin country’s own women, with many Dominicanas often playing a supporting role in the success of bachateros.
