Nina Chehab’s Final Reflection
My final project was a slideshow in which I explored music within Puerto Rico culture. Music is a defining aspect of Puerto Rican culture, and I had always wanted to delve deeper into its origins and its importance. To begin my presentation, I included some facts about Puerto Rican history that I learned in class, along with some musical history facts, in order to contextualize my project. I followed up by making a personal connection by interviewing my mother, a Puerto Rican native, and gathered her opinion on why music is so central to Puerto Rican culture. To finish off my project, I decided to include the analysis of the lyrics of one of my favorite songs by a very prominent Puerto Rican rapper and singer, Bad Bunny.
My project is very important to me because I am extremely passionate about Puerto Rico and the island’s culture, as it is part of who I am as a person. Growing up, I never had access to any classes that taught me about Puerto Rican history, even though Puerto Rico is essentially part of the United States as a territory. Classes always focused on the “mainland”, and never discussed the origins of the island, let alone its culture. In Introduction to Latinx Studies, I was finally able to get a glimpse into Puerto Rican history for the first time.
In this class, we discussed Puerto Rico under Spanish rule, a fact I touched on in the beginning of my project. We also discussed Puerto Rico as a United States territory, and how it came to be a territory once the Treaty of Paris was signed after the Spanish American War. I used this knowledge to explore how Puerto Rican music originated and what defines it today, specifically through specific notes and instruments. Without our discussion on Puerto Rican culture, I would have never had a full understanding of how music connected the people of the island, especially through the generations. I would have never been able to fully grasp why music is so central to Puerto Rican culture. Lastly, I would have never fully understood the ties Puerto Rican music has to the original people of the island.
A goal I have for this project is to bring even more awareness to Puerto Rican culture. Even if its impact is small, I hope that my project will bring attention to this vibrant island and its beautiful, warm culture. It brings a genuine smile to my face to see Puerto Rico under a big spotlight in popular culture today, as I explored in my project through my analysis of Bad Bunny’s, one of today’s biggest artists, song. It reminded me of when we discussed Miles Morales, Marvel’s first Afro-Latino Spider-Man, in class. I specifically remember analyzing the Spider-Man video game, in which Miles’s house was decorated for Christmas in classic Puerto Rican fashion. His house was filled with pastelitos, the Puerto Rican flag, coquis, etcetera. As a half Puerto Rican woman who has grown up adoring these tokens of my culture, it was extremely heartwarming to see this in such a popular video game. It was even more heartwarming to explore this topic in an academic setting. The topics we explored in this class will live on in me as I continue my journey at Cornell, and I hope my project was able to reflect that. (WC: 563)