Beyoncé, Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga are among a handful of living pop artists who have amassed enough cultural clout to result in college classes being taught about them. At 31, the global superstar Bad Bunny is about to have (at least) his third, as Yale University plans to offer a course about him this fall.
The Yale course, “Bad Bunny: Musical Aesthetics and Politics,” was conceived by Albert Laguna, an associate professor of American studies and ethnicity, race and migration. The Yale Daily News was the first to report on the new course, saying that Professor Laguna was inspired to create the class by Bad Bunny’s latest album, “Debí Tirar Más Fotos,” which the artist has described as his “most Puerto Rican album ever.”
Bad Bunny was raised in the coastal town of Vega Baja, Puerto Rico, and has risen over the past decade to become a megastar of reggaeton and Latin trap, helping launch Spanish-language music into the contemporary pop mainstream. He has since netted three chart-topping Billboard albums, headlined at Coachella and become one of the most streamed artists in the world. But his new album, which was recorded in Puerto Rico, is a soulful ode to his roots and homeland, where he was born as Benito Martínez Ocasio.
The Yale course intends to use the album to study the Puerto Rican diaspora, Caribbean politics and culture, colonialism and musical genres that Bad Bunny has experimented with, such as salsa, bomba and plena.
In a phone interview, Professor Laguna described an experience with Bad Bunny’s new album during a trip to New Orleans, which inspired him to design the class.
“I was walking around New Orleans listening to it, connecting with the Caribbean feel of the city in neighborhoods like the French Quarter, which can feel a bit like San Juan, and I just became struck by everything this album is doing,” Professor Laguna said. “You have all these creative ways he’s addressing Puerto Rico’s colonial past and present in it and the current challenges the island faces. It’s all over the album. And he’s engaging these issues in music that’s joyful.”
