Plástico
Rubén Blades
There is a spoken-word quality to Blades' delivery on "Plástico" that keeps pulling the track toward something more like a lecture than a song, and he knew exactly what he was doing. The music is warm and rhythmically alive — the band keeps the groove generous even as the lyrics grow increasingly pointed — but the subject is the hollowness of consumerism, the Latin American bourgeoisie who traded cultural identity for shopping malls and status signaling, the "plastic people" who mistake surfaces for substance. The critique is precise and specific: he describes types rather than individuals, assembling a portrait of an aspirational class that has emptied itself out in the process of trying to arrive somewhere. The brass arrangements have a slightly sardonic quality, too polished and cheerful for such acidic content, which is part of the point. Blades was operating simultaneously inside the salsa tradition and as its intellectual conscience, and the tension between the form's celebratory energy and the content's political seriousness generates most of the song's power. It came out of the late 1970s moment when Latin identity politics in New York were sharpening, when questions of assimilation and resistance were urgent and unresolved. The song sounds dated in its production and permanently current in its argument. You listen to it when you want art that has an opinion and is not embarrassed about having it.
medium
1970s
polished, warm, ironic
New York Latin, Panamanian, late-1970s Latin identity politics
Salsa, Latin. Salsa Consciente. defiant, playful. Maintains a rhythmically warm, almost cheerful groove throughout while the lyric grows increasingly pointed — the dissonance between form and content is the argument.. energy 7. medium. danceability 6. valence 5. vocals: spoken-word male, lecturing and sardonic, precise, politically earnest. production: warm rhythm section, sardonic brass, deliberately upbeat arrangement undercutting acidic content. texture: polished, warm, ironic. acousticness 3. era: 1970s. New York Latin, Panamanian, late-1970s Latin identity politics. Working or commuting alone when you want art that has an opinion and is not embarrassed about having it.