Bad Bunny's Halftime History Lesson ( Vocab BOOST )

TRANSCRIPT

Get ready to learn a bunch of great vocabulary while analysing the importance of Bad Bunny's Super Bowl Halftime show. We're going to read an article that features not only a review, but also provides the cultural context necessary to really grasp what we watched.

Transcript

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Before we start, I just wanted to let you know that I'm uploading season two of English with Dane to my YouTube channel in case you prefer to listen to it there, or if you're considering canceling your Spotify subscription, or if you recommend the show to someone who doesn't use Spotify, etc. You'll find the YouTube channel under English with Dane, of course, and for now I've uploaded the first two episodes, but we'll keep uploading more on a daily basis. Also, I think the captions work much better on YouTube, so there's that. Alright, let's start the show. Hey, what's up? What's going on? Welcome to another episode of English with Dane, a podcast designed to help you enjoy the process of perfecting your English. As always, I'm your host Dane, and you can find me on Instagram and TikTok at English with Dane. On this episode, we're going to focus on vocabulary. We're going to read through an article and extract a bunch of new words that you can add to your arsenal and express yourself better and in a way that is more true to you. I think a lot of the time people think they are limited by grammar-related issues when in reality it's often an issue of choosing the right words. The more words we know, the more efficiently and accurately we can communicate. I think speaking slowly and choosing your words wisely, con sabiludia, wisely, is a much better goal than being able to speak quickly. Pace isn't as important when your economy of words is where it needs to be. I was listening to a podcast the other day, and the guest was Sam Harris, who, if you've never heard speak or express himself, I really think you should because it's a treat. He speaks slowly, but he's so accurate with the words he chooses, it's sometimes almost overwhelming how well he gets his points across. Sam Harris, by the way, is, I guess, a public intellectual. He's a writer and a podcaster who speaks about things like neuroscience, philosophy, ethics, religion, and a bunch of other seemingly dense topics, but he has an amazing ability to explain his reasoning, surazonamiento, his reasoning in a way that is, I think, really satisfying. So check him out if you get the chance. But anyway, today we are reading a review of Bad Bunny's Super Bowl halftime show, which I'm sure by now you've seen. The decision of having Bad Bunny perform during this year's Super Bowl is one that has drawn a lot of headlines because of the division that it has sowed, que ha sembrado, because of the division it has sowed. So, by the way, is spelled S-O-W and means sembrar. This word always makes me think of the saying, you reap what you sow. Cosechas lo que siembras o recoges lo que siembras in Spanish. You reap what you sow. Reap is spelled R-E-A-P. I think it came up, Surgio, it came up in a recent episode too. As always, I'll link the article in the description of the episode, along with the episode transcript, so you can follow along without missing a word. Okay, let's do it. You are listening to episode 41 of season two of English with Dane. Hit it! All right, the article is called Bad Bunny's Halftime History Lesson. The superstar showcased Puerto Rican pride during a 13-minute set that turned a global opportunity into an intimate personal performance, written by John Garamanica. De primeras, right off the bat, we have a great verb there in the subheading, that little text under the main title or headline, right? The subheading. To showcase. To showcase means to present or highlight, presentar o resaltar, to present or highlight something in its best light, let's say. So you want to demonstrate its value or quality, or maybe capabilities too. Maybe you go to an exhibition that is showcasing local artists, or maybe a movie trailer really showcases the cinematography of the movie itself. Let's keep going. There is perhaps no stage more visible than the Super Bowl halftime show, viewed each year by upward of 100 million people. And there are few, if any, performers in pop more popular and embraced than Bad Bunny, the 31-year-old Puerto Rican superstar who has been one of music's dominant global innovators for a decade. It would seem like an ideal match, an epic platform for an epic performer, an alignment of grand-scale ambition and execution. And yet, Bad Bunny did something quite novel with his Super Bowl performance in Santa Clara, California on Sunday night, turning it into an extended presentation on how to make a global opportunity intimate, personal, and historically specific. Like his sixth solo album, Devitir más Fotos, which a week ago made history as the first Spanish-language album to win the Grammy's top honor, and his 31-show residency in San Juan, Puerto Rico last summer, he assiduously brought people to him on his terms. Here, it started in the sugarcane fields, once Puerto Rico's cash crop, and a source of rampant labor exploitation. Bad Bunny began his show with the frisky Titi Me Pregundo from 2022, walking amid laborers in babas, chopping at stocks and tall plants forming something of a labyrinth. He strode past vendors of cocofrío, tacos and piraguas, a pair of boxers sparring, a table of older gentlemen playing dominoes, women at a nail salon. This was Bad Bunny's private Puerto Rico, a place of cultural joy and political complication. The first two minutes of his 13-minute show took place largely within that maze, an almost protected space that projected safety and ease, just before he emerged on the roof of La Casita, the replica of a traditional Puerto Rican home that served as the centerpiece of his set here, and also his residency performances, and began serenading the world. Almost every minute that followed, performed almost entirely in Spanish, a Super Bowl first, featured a combination of musical astuteness, familial exuberance, and socio-political statement. This combination was most vivid leading up to and during El Abarón, the Blackout, a 2022 song that has become something of a resistance anthem, in part because its video includes a mini documentary about inequities in Puerto Rico. The Super Bowl rendition began with workers falling from utility poles in a flash of sparks, a nod to the blackouts that crippled the U.S. territory for several months following Hurricane María in 2017. Just before that, the Puerto Rican pop star Ricky Martin sang huskily, okay, con vos ronca, huskily, perhaps pushing beyond his vocal limits, part of Lo que le pasó a Hawaii, a 2025 song warning about modern day colonialism. You can say upward or upwards con S al final. Either way is fine. More than 100 million people, but it's a great little phrase that you can throw in that sounds a bit smarter, let's say. You can say more than, sure. But why say more than every time? Maybe at work you can say there were upwards of 200 people at our last event. And you sound just a little bit better. So remember that one. Upward of or upwards of if you want. Both work. We had the term cash crop in there too, referring to sugarcane, cañera de azúcar, sugarcane. The term cash crop refers to a crop, uncultivo, a crop that is primarily sold for profit as opposed to the farmer's own use or sustenance. I did a little bit of research, and sugarcane holds a very important place in the history of Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico built much of its colonial economy around sugarcane, which dominated agriculture from the Spanish period through U.S. rule. It also says sugar plantations shaped, dieron forma, they shaped land ownership, labor systems, and wealth concentration, leaving long-term economic and social consequences that outlasted the industry itself, o sea que duraron más que la industria, that outlasted the industry itself. Of course, this means that Puerto Rico's sugarcane industry relied on the systematic exploitation of enslaved Africans and later poorly paid rural laborers, trabajadores rurales, rural laborers working under really brutal conditions. It's a similar situation to that of the cotton and tobacco industry in the United States, which was of course also built around the slavery and exploitation of black Americans. So in the same vein, wealth flowed outwards hacia afuera to colonial powers and foreign companies, while local workers remained trapped in poverty with little political or economic power. That phrase, by the way, in the same vein, vein spelled V-E-I-N, como suena, just means in a similar way or idea or theme, in the same vein. I also wanted to quickly talk about the word nod spelled NOD. The sentence was the Super Bowl rendition began with workers falling from utility poles in a flash of sparks, a nod to the blackouts that crippled the U.S. territory for several months following Hurricane Maria in 2017. So a nod to the blackouts. In this case, a nod is a reference or an acknowledgement, un reconocimiento, an acknowledgement. So it's a symbolic reference to the blackouts that crippled, que paralizaron, or afectaron gravemente, or dejaron inoperativo, that crippled the US territory for months after Hurricane Maria in 2017. A nod. Stride is spelled st-r-id e and it means to walk with long, confident steps. So it evokes purpose, maybe urgency or authority. In this case we have strode, so again, in past, the sentence was he strode past vendors of cocofrío, tacos, and piraguas. So he walked confidently past them. Seguimos. Bad bunny underscored that further by playing quick snippets, pequeños trozos, quick snippets of early to mid-2000s breakthrough reggaetón songs from Don Omar, Tego Calderón, Héctor El Fader, and Daddy Yankee, whose 2004 hit Gasolina was a foundational track of the genre's global explosion. Sadly, none of those stars were present. He also showcased Toñita, the matriarch of a long-running Puerto Rican social club in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which Bad Bunny appeared at last year and shouted out on his debitir más fotos track Nueva Yol. Devitar más fotos is a narratively and sonically ambitious album about restoring one's connection to home and to heritage. Part of understanding history is honoring it, and part of understanding history is knowing when to call attention to its tragedies. Which is why early in his set, Bad Bunny performed an ecstatic Yope Reo Sola, an anti-misogyny statement from 2020, that's one of his most popular songs and also one of his most proactive, taking the reggaetón community to task for its dismal treatment of women. Dismal, spelled D-I-S-M-A-L, means depressing, right? Desolador in Spanish, I'd say. Dismal. His delivery of it here on the roof of La Casita was emphatic, and also the soundtrack to a party. At his residence, La Casita was a place for the well-known to watch the show while also being a part of it. Members of the porch crowd on Sunday included Cardi B, who has collaborated with Bad Bunny and is partly of Dominican heritage, the Colombian superstar Carol G., the Hollywood star Pedro Pascal, who was born in Chile, the Mexican-American actress Jessica Alba, the Venezuelan baseball star Ronald Acuña Jr., and the rising Puerto Rican star Young Miko, something of a bad bunny protege. It was something of a mystery, notwithstanding the added salsa rhythm section provided by the Puerto Rican outfit Los Sobrinos. For what it's worth, Cardi B was literally right there. A version of I Like It, their genre crossing pop smash with Jay Balvin, would have been welcome. The blue of Gaga's dress was perhaps a nod to the Puerto Rican independence flag, which later in the show, Bad Bunny hoisted, levantó, hoisted over his shoulder while he delivered el apagón. Ahí está nod otra vez, but this time you know exactly what it means. Notwithstanding, what a great word. Notwithstanding means despite, or in spite of a particular circumstance. The sentence was about Lady Gaga's part in the performance. It said, it was something of a mystery, notwithstanding the added salsa rhythm section provided by the Puerto Rican outfit Los Sobrinos. In Spanish, we'd say no obstante or a pesar de. Seguimos. There are many modes of political positioning, outright sloganeering, encoded messages, visual cues. Freedom and joy themselves can be acts of resistance. All of those were present during this performance, though there was no moment as direct as Bad Bunny's ice out call at the Grammys a week ago. Instead, he led dozens of dancers in ornate choreography, pointedly including same-sex pairings. There was a narrative through line, como que algo que le daba coherencia, there was a narrative through line which went from a proposal to a wedding, an actual one, to the appearance of a child watching Bad Bunny's Grammy acceptance speech, though that thread was slightly muddy or unclear, muddy as like colodo. He was in fact an actor, but the confusion underscored, ahí está esa palabra otra vez, the confusion underscored the urge to apply an unwieldy political literalism to Bad Bunny's performance. Unwieldy, spelled UNWIEDLY, means difficult to manage, so the confusion underscored, or resaltó underscored the urge to apply an unwieldy political literalism to Bad Bunny's performance, so taking everything way too literally. For some, the mere fact, el simple hecho, the mere fact of Bad Bunny's selection for the halftime show could only be read as a political statement. But Bad Bunny's tent was and always has been far bigger, far more musically generous, and far more imaginative. Near the end of his performance, he shouted, God bless America, then ran through a list of the countries that make up South, Central, and North America, from Chile all the way up to Canada. He held out a football that read, Together We Are America, and then spiked it, Latino al Suelo, and then spiked it before his final song, Debitar más fotos. Dozens of people surrounded him, waving flags of the countries he just named, virtually swaddling him, como arropándole, swaddling him as they ushered him off the field and back to protected private space. So that's where the article ends, but there are a few more words to talk about real quick. The first sentence of this last section had an interesting pairing of words. Outright sloganeering. Outright means blatant or obvious, like rotundo o directo. Then we have a pretty complicated but interestingly crafted or put together word, sloganeering. Slogan as in a slogan, right? But sloganeering refers to the use of simplistic, catchy slogans in place of serious argument or nuanced thinking. Sometimes that seems to be more common these days, as we sadly move away from nuanced or complicated perspectives. So we have outright sloganeering. Let's reread that sentence to finish off. It said, There are many modes of political positioning, outright sloganeering, encoded messages, visual cues. Cues, escrito, C U E S are symbols or hints that communicate things indirectly, by the way, like pistas, señales or indicios. So in that sentence, it's just listing off ways in which people position themselves politically. We all do it, from the way we talk, to the way we dress, to the music we like, etc. I really loved his performance, by the way. I even got a bit emotional watching it, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that. I think it was a really beautiful message to send to the world on such a grand stage, and I think it's a necessary one. So yeah, let me know your thoughts on not just the musical performance, but on what it meant for you or what you felt watching it. If you disagree with me completely, also let me know. Write to me on Instagram at Englishwithdain, send me an email at Englishwithdain at gmail.com, or leave a comment on Spotify or wherever you listen to the show. Alright, that's it for this episode of English with Dane. I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope you got something from it. If you did, share this episode with someone you think would also enjoy it because. I'd really appreciate it. Let's keep this thing going and let's try to reach more people. As always, thanks for listening and tune in next week. All right, talk soon. Later.