A parrot, a moor, a monkey and Bad Bunny
What color is the outfit Bad Bunny always wears? Tick-tock, tick-tock… Pantone Puerto Rico. Everything is blue, red, white. Tricolor 3HD. What is seen and what is not seen. United Colores of San José, Bayamón, Carolina, Ponce… Motley Caribbean. Gaudy Antilles. Kaleidoscopic island. Polychromatic nationalism. Nationalism through the eyes. Nationalism for all senses. But he is not a nationalist. Can you imagine a Catalan musician doing this?
Impossible. He would already be in prison convicted of monochromatic terrorism and for attacking the plural color palette of democracy. Or in a rehabilitation center for patients with violent-paranoid ophthalmology. Bad Bunny is paving the way for political painting. A sample of primary color should be taken from him: blood red. Does it come from this first brushstroke?
Flic-flic. We heard the Catalan language at the concert in Barcelona. Is there something inside him? Phoneme, seed, sprout, chive, ovule, soda water… From those Catalans who emigrated to Puerto Rico? Flap-flap. It is estimated that 80% of the island's merchants in the 19th century were of Catalan origin. The Barcelós, Bacardís, Serrallés… They anticipate liquid society. In 1881, the Catalan shipowner Bonós Llensa i Feliu founded the municipality of Barceloneta there… to connect it directly with the Barcelona and Nuevayol triangle (yes, Bad). Until the beginning of the 20th century, Catalan was a language spoken naturally on the island without the need for school or water immersion. The Ripolls, Fonts, Ponts, Serras, Prats, Carbonells, Malarets, Buxós… are still there. Now grafted in a thousand ways, and distant, but with Catalan deoxyribonucleic acid within them. The estelada is born (1918) from the textile idealism visions of the captain, and son of people from Lleida, Vicenç Albert Ballester, glimpsed on the free land of Puerto Rico and Cuba. And so many buckets of mixed colors. But zip, flap, splash, rub, whoosh, rac… Faded, bleached, washed-out brotherhood.
Puerto Rico and Catalonia don't paint much: they are nations without full sovereignty. Puerto Rico is a non-incorporated territory of the United States with self-government. Catalonia is an autonomous community (ha, ha!) within Spain. But does Bad Bunny mean anything to Catalans? One can be a painter of global, planetary, sidereal walls with the brush of nationalism. He is always dressed in pride. He doesn't mold, he doesn't shrink, he moves forward. Music is an excuse. The BSO is Puerto Rico. Everything the opposite of Catalonia. We are painters of sad, desolate, yellowish, cadaverous walls. There is a lack of color of pride. Can the Puerto Rican painter help us?
Yes, the work will surely call him. Do you hear the music? Those super popular traveling verses sound, by land, air, and especially sea, from the Catalans of the 19th century who were doing, or dreamed of doing, the Americas: "A parrot, a Moor, a monkey, and a gentleman from Puerto Rico" (in the 80s, the trio Monzó-Barnils-Vendrell made a mythical program on Catalunya Ràdio). Puerto Rico is where the great concerts for freedom were held. For the change of life. For tomorrow. Couldn't Bad Bunny do a version of it now, in Catalan? If there is a Nuevayol, there is also a Catarrico. Music, I don't know, but the guy can sure put kilos of pride in his veins, by the shovel-full, and through all the colorful orifices. Because the verses already end by saying that painting earthly pride is the future. That Catalan gentleman dismisses the parrot, the monkey, and the Moor, and "packs a bag... and off to Puerto Rico!"