Latin American and Colombian Identity Through the Prism of Reggaeton (Based on the Work of Maluma)

Reggaeton, born at the crossroads of Caribbean and Afro-Latin traditions, has become in contemporary Latin American cultural space not only a musical genre but also a social phenomenon through which the values and meanings of a new youth identity are articulated. In the Colombian context, this genre acquires a particular significance: it is in Medellín that a local school of reggaeton emerges, combining street culture, global media, and traditional cultural codes. Maluma’s work allows us to consider reggaeton as a «discourse of identity», where three cultural layers intersect: the Latin American (hybridity, mestizaje, carnivalesque spirit, machismo), the Colombian (the experience of la violencia, parlache slang, social polarization), and the youth (openness to globalization, code-switching, pop culture aesthetics). These levels create a complex and multilayered system in which linguistic and stylistic devices become cultural markers. The use of excessively familiar and diminutive terms of address, metaphors and hyperboles, code-switching, themes of corporality and festivity constructs a space of «everyday carnival», where traditional Catholic morality and patriarchal models are inverted, giving way to a culture of pleasure, freedom, and emotional sincerity. Maluma’s reggaeton functions as a cultural compass that signals the transition of Colombian youth from traditional identities towards a hybrid and globalized model of self-expression. Thus, the study of Maluma’s song discourse reveals reggaeton not only as a musical practice but also as a reflection of the profound sociocultural processes of Latin America, where contemporary Colombian, and more broadly, Latin American youth identity is being shaped.

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