Spencer Ackerman files this great dispatch from Kurdistan:
Wafting through the airwaves and onto the streets of Irbil is an unlikely palliative speaking directly to the Kurdish imagination in this current moment of netherworldly nationhood: reggaetón. At precisely the right moment of national confusion, this hybrid confection of Jamaican dancehall reggae and Latin lyrical thuggishness is musing to northern Iraq about the liberating possibilities of gasolina. In a bizarre but tangible sense, the peshmergas' status as Irbil street bosses has competition from a San Juan rapper named Daddy Yankee.
Gasolina is Daddy Yankee's anthem, the track that earned him his crown as king of reggaetón and a 5,000-word profile in the New York Times Magazine. It's possible to hear the song three times a day over the radio in Irbil, probably more often than it appeared on the New York City FM dial at the height of its stateside ubiquity in 2005.
That's thanks largely to Radio Sawa, the much-derided brainchild of the United States broadcasting board of governors that mixes American pop and agitprop, which mainlines Gasolina directly to Irbil. The song is so popular in the city that a trip to the Happy Times restaurant and shisha lounge in the middle-class neighbourhood of Ainkawa is an invitation to a reggaetón barrage. On a typical evening, the restaurant's massive projector screen shows Daddy Yankee merrily waxing down a woman's shapely and barely-concealed derrière while patrons nod their heads and chew pizza.
Bemused incredulity over the popularity of reggaetón in Kurdistan is among the most telling indications of a first-time visitor.
It would be a stretch to say that the enthusiasm for Gasolina has to do with its subject matter, especially when considering its aggressive rhythm and near-pornographic video. But Daddy Yankee's signature track is a sexually-explicit ode to what gasolina can provide – and here "gasoline" can mean, as Sasha Frere-Jones in the New Yorker, speed, rum, semen or gasoline – and that, of course, is unadulterated pleasure. And at the moment, as Iraq disintegrates, the Kurds are betting quite heavily on what gasoline can do for them.
Well, at least Radio Sawa has had some impact on the Middle East....
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