Welcoming Bad Bunny Into Our Household

Just as millions of Christians worldwide start up the on-ramp towards Easter Sunday, a certain mega-star has joined — in a manner of speaking — this particular clergy family.

If you don’t know him (and that can be forgiven), here are some facts: he has been the most streamed artist of the year on Spotify, his genre is called reggaeton, he is huge throughout the Spanish-speaking Caribbean and also in New York City (where this photo was taken, during a support-the-healthcare workers motorcade), his birth name is Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio, and he’s known worldwide as “Bad Bunny.”

Not Your Regular Rabbit

He chose that name after looking at a photograph of himself as a kid in a bunny costume, captured at a moment when he was clearly annoyed. So, even though he sang in the choir at his family’s Catholic church until age 13, he parted ways with the kind of fluffy, nose-twitching creature we may be more familiar with, especially in early springtime:

And while we don’t expect him in New Hampshire anytime soon, he is currently touring big venues in the USA; our two sons — one of whom is a mega-fan of the mega-star — got to see him last night in Washington D.C. Expectations were exceeded.

I won’t share the actual post-concert photo we were sent, trying to observe my boundaries as a mother, but I can tell you that, except for the fact that they were at an enormous indoor stadium with seats way up high, the degree of crowd excitement must have looked something like this, times maybe a hundred.

Both before and afterwards, our son Henry pronounced the event “life-changing.” This T-shirt will go with him back to Ohio, soon on a post-graduation trip to Mexico, then to start a job in Chicago. Eventually, it might become like the torn ones I still have, from UConn Husky Championship seasons past.

Wanting to absorb at least some of the thrill that he felt (because that’s one of the many effects of being a mother, at least it has been for me) I spent some time letting BB’s rich voice fill my car as I drove to the vet’s office to refill some of Rocky’s medication for arthritis. I’m also learning that, during the 1990s in Puerto Rico, before Bad Bunny was even bagging groceries as a teenager, the authorities were actually trying to crack down on what they called a new style of “underground” music. But it exploded in popularity, with this island as its epicenter.

It’s not marked on this map, but Bad Bunny comes from Vega Baja, a town about 30 miles west of San Juan– not the same as San Juan, he’d remind you. Looking at the map brings me back about 40 years or so, when I stayed with my brother’s family in Bayamon and traveled with him as he reported on baseball games all over.

That was decades before the devastation of Hurricane Maria, and before Bad Bunny’s raw talent and then huge influence propelled him into also becoming an activist on behalf of his people, speaking out against government neglect; also denouncing sexual assault as well as breaking down gender stereotypes and eluding outsider efforts to pin him down into being this or than, definitively. He has also put his money into a “Good Bunny Foundation” that provides help to children living in poverty.

Life-Changing, Indeed

None of this would I have ever learned without my son’s wild enthusiasm for this performer. I would still be satisfied with old favorites like Creedence, Otis Redding, Bonnie Raitt, the Allman Brothers. My classical side takes Bach in the crisp morning, Debussy or Brahms in the fluid afternoon; Chopin in the dreamy evening. Now, though, I have made new room on my musical plate.

It’s amazing, sometimes, how family relationships work to illuminate whole new sectors of experience.

I won’t pretend this is parallel exactly (or even mostly), but it is definitely true that my husband has also brought me in much closer proximity to, not just a new artist, but an entire realm that I didn’t inhabit before knowing him. I won’t call myself “oblivious” but maybe something close to that. I knew scenes like this mostly from books or movies, only.

In a few weeks, in many places churches will once again be filling — albeit with a number of rules strictly in place, to assure everyone’s safety. Easter Sunday services will have a “holy” vibe, very different from concerts given by huge pop stars, and thank goodness for that.

If it will be an affirmation of new life we’re celebrating, once again, then I am a mega-fan of all the splendid ways, large and small, that this can happen, even amidst ongoing setbacks and sometimes terrible tragedy — for all of my family members and, drawing the circle way larger, for the whole human race.

In what ways have “your people” expanded your panorama?