The Politics of the Stage: Exploring Live Performances as Sites for Political Engagement through Bad Bunny

The Politics of the Stage:

Exploring Live Performances as Sites for Political Engagement through Bad Bunny

By Isis Arevalo

Figure 0. Bad Bunny at El Coliseo in Puerto Rico.

Introduction:

This project will investigate Bad Bunny’s live performances as sites of political awakening and engagement for his various audiences. It will look specifically at three contributing factors—his live production of cultural sound, his incorporation of aesthetic features, and his deliverance of explicit political commentary—that mobilize such site-specific political activation, contribute to shaping his political messaging, and influence how receptive audiences are to it.

This project argues that these factors collectively create a sense of community and confidence between audience members at sites for live performance, and is strengthened the larger the audience with a shared background becomes. This project additionally contends that the affective consequences of his performances—empowering, informing, and/or activating his audiences—vary depending on the size and demographic of each audience he performs for, and is made possible by the shared characteristics of language and culture that are centered by Bad Bunny through different mediums in his performance. 

Context and Background:

Since his rise to global prominence, Bad Bunny has grown increasingly vocal about political issues affecting Puerto Ricans on both the island and in the diaspora. This was a key course theme, highlighted specifically in the week of October 2nd, “PFKNR,” in which assessed Bad Bunny’s role as an activist and embodiment of Puerto Rican empowerment. Two key aggravating historical factors have been Hurricane Maria and the government’s inability, or unwillingness, to support Puerto Ricans in the wake of the natural disaster, and the recent state government election, a contest between the pro-independence party, el Partido Indepedentista Puertorriqueño, or PIP, and the pro-statehood standing party, el Partido Nuevo Progresista, or PNP. As the political turmoil heightened in the months leading up to the November 5th election, Bad Bunny released increasingly direct and critical art and commentary to raise awareness of the standing government’s corruption and to call for civic engagement from Puerto Ricans to put a stop to the ongoing political, economic, and social neglect and harm enacted by the PNP. See a timeline of key historical moments and key potentially political performances below.

CONTEXTUALIZING BAD BUNNY: A TIMELINE OF POLITICS AND PERFORMANCE

Figure 1. Timeline of Key Historical Events and Key Performances.**

**if there are issues with quality, see hyperlink above.

Bad Bunny’s live performances as sites for political engagement must be assessed within the context of a broader scholarly conversation regarding the sociological effects of live performance. In the existing literature, sociologists Michael Dowdy, Nick Baxter-Moore, and Thomas Kitts make a recurring claim that live performances create a bond amongst audience members and between audience members and the artist of interest. This is largely a product of seeing a final product—music—produced authentically, or live, before the audience. The authenticity of live sound builds trust between performer and audience member, and thus the audience member becomes receptive to not only the art, but the ideas shared by the artist. 

Moreover, as sociologist Dowdy argues, live performance in small live music venues serve as spaces where individuals are invited to participate in an artist’s performance, resulting in a sense of collective agency. This sense of collective agency then translates into greater motivation for democratic, political participation, even if the artist is not sharing explicitly political themes in their lyrics. However, the caveat of Dowdy’s argument is that he insists that this kind of political activation in audiences is only possible in small venue spaces, as large arenas relegate audience members to be merely “congratulatory” rather than participatory. Thus, any outreach from the artist to the audience becomes increasingly shallow as the size of the audience increases. However, the connections formed between Bad Bunny and his globally-spanning audiences challenges Dowdy’s limited conclusions on how audiences can, or cannot, connect with artists on increasingly larger stages. 

Finally, in terms of sociological knowledge, Bad Bunny’s live performances will be assessed alongside the concept of collective effervescence, a term coined by sociologist Emile Durkheim, which is the idea that people experience a sense of unity, joy, and fulfillment from engaging in collective activity for a shared purpose. While this term is typically applied in religious settings (to help explain why mass services are so moving to their audiences), it can, and has been, extended to any collective activity—in this case, it will extend and apply to the sociological effects of live performance. Since the scholarship assessing how live performances shape the way in which audiences and listeners engage with artists is limited, sociological concepts, such as collective effervescence, are necessarily extended beyond the realms of social interaction they were initially applied to. Considering the political context framing Bad Bunny’s live performances, alongside the contested assertion of live music venues as sites for social, and therefore political, engagement through the notion of collective effervescence, three major case studies will assess how sound production, aesthetics, and direct commentary shape the political potentials of Bad Bunny’s live performances.

Case Study 1: Cultural Sound Production & the “Una Velita” Performance (Nov. 2024)

Through his emphasis on cultural sound production, Bad Bunny’s live performances breed a sense of pride in Puerto Rican and Spanish-speaking identities. He employs Spanish-speaking musicians and vocalists, alongside markedly Caribbean instruments, such as conga and bongo drums, to accompany his own vocals. However, in the “Una Velita” performance on the eve of the 2024 Election Day, he foregrounds the musicianship of the track, rather than putting himself in the limelight (as noted by his muted dress and demeanor in the performance; see 0:25-1:10). By positioning such musical talents and symbols of culture at the forefront of the live performances, it becomes a privilege to witness these supporting artists as embodiments of the dynamism of Puerto Rican, Caribbean, and Spanish-speaking culture overall. Moreover, as Dowdy emphasizes, the live production of cultural sound through vocals and percussion communicate an authenticity from Bad Bunny as the focal artist that is then received in trust by an empowered audience. This authenticity of sound also comes from Benito’s use of Spanish-speaking vocalists in other, less muted performances, such as the 2023 Grammys opening performance. This effectively places musicians that have a shared language and cultural aspect in a position where audiences, who share that intimate knowledge of language and culture, can connect with them with pride.

Case Study 2: Aesthetics & the 2023 Grammys Performance (Feb. 2023)

Figure 2. Bad Bunny Performing “El Apagón” and “Después de la Playa” at the 2023 Grammys.

Through his creative use of aesthetics, Bad Bunny’s live performance stages visually pay homage to Puerto Rican culture and physical landscapes. Considered within the context of a corrupt, pro-statehood standing government that often neglects the needs of Puerto Rican people in favor of the economic benefits that come from tax breaks and an exploitative relationship with the mainland United States, Bad Bunny places cultural, as opposed to economic, value on the island through this staging. In transforming the Grammys stage into a warm, energetic representation of Puerto Rico, Bad Bunny emphasizes the island’s people and their contributions to its cultural richness, builds a sense of identification amidst individual Puerto Rican audience members, and communicates this unified sense empowerment to the outsider groups watching the internationally televised performance.

Case Study 2.1: Aesthetics & the “MIA” Street Performance (July 2019)

While the Grammys stage is artificially transformed into a familiar beachfront physical landscape, Bad Bunny’s “MIA” performance on the Jimmy Fallon showcases the real physical backdrop of Puerto Rico. This performance, set on the streets of San Juan, showcases the tangible, aesthetic beauty of the cityscape as a symbol of prosperity for San Juan, Puerto Rico. This is especially pertinent when considering the performance took place just two years after the impact of Hurricane Maria. While the performance is jovial and festive, it has a political edge in that it emphasizes the perseverance of the Puerto Rican people in spite of the neglect faced by the island at the pro-statehood government’s hands in the wake of Hurricane Maria. This live performance uses an unconventional venue, the streets, intimate in its limited physical range, and projects it to a widespread audience by being nationally televised to Puerto Rican and non-Puerto Rican audiences alike.

Case Study 3: Explicit Political Commentary & the “Garbage” Instagram Post (Oct. 2024)

@badbunnypr. “garbage”:

By integrating explicit political commentary into digitally produced portions of his live performances, Bad Bunny uses the stage to launch critiques about the shortcomings of the standing government to inform audiences about present corruption. In October 2024, Bad Bunny posted this documentary-style video montage about Puerto Rican cultural figures that helped build up a sense of pride, unity, and empowerment to its viewers. Originally, the video was only shared at the December 2021 three-day Un Verano Sin Ti concert held at El Coliseo, a popular music venue in Puerto Rico, in front of a live audience, immediately preceding his live performance. The decision to publish it on a global, digital platform came after Puerto Rico was equated to “garbage” at a Trump rally. As wider audiences are reached with this explicit political commentary, a sense of collective empathy and responsibility to one another, despite differences in language and culture, was made possible.

In cases like these, where the demographic of the audience is altered, the same symbols take on different meanings: the video presented to a Puerto Rican audience cultivates a sense of empowerment and pride, while the same video presented to a global audience educates more than it empowers. In both cases, however, Benito makes both a political statement and engages in political action on stage—Puerto Rican culture is worthy of acknowledgment and admiration, as any other (hegemonic) culture is granted, slander against a non-dominant culture will not be tolerated, and such stereotyping or mischaracterization will be corrected on a global stage. 

Expanding the Literature—Challenging Dowdy’s Argument:

While Dowdy argues that connection, engagement, and subsequent action between artist and audience is only possible through interactions in small music venues, I argue that larger venues do not require direct interaction artist to audience to still produce a sense of connection and a subsequent push to political action. In larger venues, this unity is based not on an individual relationship between artist and audience, but is rather based on another shared feature, such as a shared language or a shared culture, between audience members. This commonality is highlighted through the artists’ emphasis on the production of cultural sound, on the emulation of key physical aesthetics, and on voicing explicit political criticisms. Thus, it is not necessary to feel personally connected to Bad Bunny as an individual to be moved by the sense of collectiveness he builds between individual audience members brought together by a commonality in culture and/or language. This sense of connection, reified when the audience experiences the phenomenon of collective effervescence as an effect of live performance, motivates subsequent action that is political in nature, even if Bad Bunny remains distant, physically and in interpersonal relatability, in larger concert venues. This challenges the present boundaries of live performance scholarship set by Dowdy regarding the connections possible in an audience-performer relationship by extending the performance settings in which these connections are made possible.

Conclusion:

Live performances are necessarily a site of collective political engagement because they bring people together for a shared purpose: to enjoy music. This sense of collectivity requires action and acknowledgment from the performer to the audience, and vice versa. While Dowdy agrees that the connection between audience and artist that is necessary to mobilize audiences towards political action is fostered by mutual trust built from live sound production and from sharing the same physical space, his claim that this connection is only possible within the context of small concert venues is challenged by the dynamic presented by Bad Bunny and his live performance audience members. Dowdy asserts that there is a certain intimacy required between performer and audience that can only be cultivated in a small venue space, but the engagement by both Puerto Rican audiences and by more diverse, global ones with Bad Bunny’s live larger venue performances are challenging counterexamples to this claim. 

Therefore, I argue that when this unity is based on another shared feature, such as a shared language or a shared culture, as an aspect of social life that requires particular insider knowledge to be included in—as is done in Bad Bunny’s performances—another shared purpose is created: to recognize commonality amongst the anonymous faces beside you. Thus, it is not necessary to feel personally connected to Bad Bunny as an individual to be moved by the collective effervescence he coordinates, but rather it results in a sense of camaraderie amongst individuals in the collective audience, to find an intrinsic motivation to help yourself and to help those alongside you whom the artist has guided you to see as a companion in culture and lived experience. Perhaps to reconcile this incongruence in argument and actuality, it can be concluded that a different form of intimacy, more widespread but still as vulnerable and mutual, is bred in larger venue spaces, as long as the artist is either connecting on a shared cultural basis with their audience, or is authentically and vulnerably presenting an aspect of their culture and art to an empathetic, receptive global audience.

Thus, as sociologist Jonathan Rosa pushes us to consider, Bad Bunny is interesting in our assessment of live performances as sites for political engagement because of what people need him to be, or what role he plays, or sense of collective identity he embodies, to empower marginalized audiences to act in their own favor. By highlighting Spanish-speaking musicians and vocalists, by reproducing the aesthetics of Puerto Rico’s physical landscape, or by speaking critically about social conditions in the politically ripe setting of a live performance, a sense of collective empowerment and urgency, for a culture and a people being otherwise stifled politically, can be fostered on a global stage.