Reggaeton and Afrobeats
Two styles where the harmony is subordinate to the rhythm, and where that is a choice rather than a shortage. If the groove is the composition, the chords must above all not want to end.
- dembow
- 85 to 100 bpm
- the cell repeats
In which styles
- Reggaeton
- Afrobeats
- Dancehall
- Latin pop
In short
Reggaeton runs between roughly eighty-five and a hundred beats per minute with the weight around ninety to ninety-six, in four four, subdivided in sixteenths. The dembow is a single rhythmic cell repeated without variation. Afrobeats is looser, with interlocking parts and a lighter touch, and it breathes where reggaeton insists.
Insistent and danceable. The repetition is not laziness: the whole effect depends on the cell never changing.
How the style works
Melodically reggaeton is the leaner of the two. Natural minor is the basis with occasional trips to the Dorian sixth, melodies use few notes and often stay within a fifth. What matters is where the syllables land against the cell.
Where you run into this
- A rhythmic cell that repeats for an entire track
- A chord loop that never cadences
- Vocal phrasing that plays against the cell rather than with it
What you leave out
In reggaeton: a live kit playing fills, because the dembow has to stay identical, and a backbeat on two and four, which collides head-on with the snare hits the cell already places.
Keep going
Everything in styles
- Funk and Disco
- Soul and R&B
- Reggaeton and Afrobeats
- Blues