Reggaeton Historian La Gata Brings Perreo 101 Pari to Miami Beach

Reggaeton Con La Gata, a multimedia project tracing reggaeton's history and cultural significance, has taken many forms over the years. What began as an undergraduate research paper by scholar Katelina "La Gata" Eccleston has morphed into a series of podcasts, lectures, and even an instrumental album. Now, La Gata is taking the project back to the place that first sparked her interest: the dance floor.

Billed as a "sexy, femme-centered party celebrating all things caribeña," the Perreo 101 Pari is an offshoot of La Gata's popular Perreo 101 podcast and lecture series. Largely featuring Black, femme, and/or queer DJs and talent, the parties showcase many of the genres and artists she uplifts and deconstructs in her work.

"One thing I think is beautiful about Perreo 101 is just the matter in which I try to center Afro-Latinidad in perreo specifically," La Gata tells New Times. "Perreo and reggaeton are not the same thing. I would say that Karol G makes reggaeton; she doesn't make perreo. Feid makes reggaeton pop, and there's nothing wrong with that, but in the dance sphere, it does put out a different sort of vibe to the environment because the primary action of perreo is to be perreando, is to be dancing. So, it's a very curated party."

The Miami Beach event at the Clevelander on Thursday, October 17, is the tenth stop for the traveling party and features sets by La Gata, Abee La Sensación, and Immasoul. The party's classroom aesthetic nods to the project's roots in academia. "I fly to a lot of these cities anyway because of my lectures," La Gata says. "Now, we're just incorporating more fun. I'm just trying to incorporate more fun into my life, into my work, where it's possible."

Part of La Gata's search for joy comes after significant trials she's faced since the inception of her project. She's spoken in previous interviews of finding alleviation on the dance floor after a sexual assault in college. Dancing to reggaeton made her feel happy, she says, and those experiences led her to her field of study. She cites the work of Dr. Marisol LeBrón, author of Policing Life and Death: Race, Violence, and Resistance in Puerto Rico; ethnomusicologist professor Wayne Marshall; and Raquel Z. Rivera, editor of Reggaeton, as influences, but she knew there was also room for her contributions.

"If you love reggaeton desde chiquita (since you were little), you've lived it," she says. "I know the complexity and the depth of this music." She says she saw an opportunity to parse the nuance of reggaeton and its related genres. "There wasn't really any respect for the diversity of this music."

She's quick to point out she didn't necessarily face resistance to her research in the academic world but that she felt a wider dismissiveness in the public when she began her undergraduate work on the subject.

"This music reflects a whole movimiento (movement) of people who are trying to pull themselves up, who have pulled themselves up, who are bosses now, who are changing the commercial development of Latin music," says La Gata. Since the beginning, she says, her work has been about establishing, "El reggaeton es inteligente (reggaeton is intelligent), and it should be thought of as such."
Today, La Gata's work is greatly respected — "My work has inspired master's degrees," she admits — and she's lectured on the cultural significance of reggaeton at Ivy Leagues, but she's also faced backlash over her critiques of popular reggaeton artists and the industry at large.

In 2020, during the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, she wrote an op-ed for Remezcla, which criticized the silence or embarrassing responses of many reggaetoneros in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd. She also discussed racial politics in Latin America with J Balvin in a Paper profile, which delved into the controversy surrounding his music video for "Perra" with Tokischa. And when Time profiled Bad Bunny in 2023, the magazine sought La Gata's commentary on his non-answers to questions on racism and colorism in the reggaeton world. She called him "a great ambassador" but noted "he still does not understand his positionality."

These critiques — the latter in particular — led to an onslaught of vitriol and even death threats. "They came in by the hundreds," she says. "I wouldn't say it killed my confidence, but it was trying to kill a part of me, and I didn't let it. But, nonetheless, it was difficult." If given the choice today, she says, she'd write the Remezcla op-ed again. As for Benito: "Critiquing Bad Bunny has come with a lot more flack that I'm still forgiving the culture for."

Despite what she describes as exclusion in certain industry circles, La Gata has jumped into music-making in her own right. In July, she released Perreo 101, an instrumental album tracing the genres she discusses on her podcast of the same name. "What if I created an instrumental album that compliments the sounds that I'm talking about? Because every episode is essentially an emphasis on ethnomusicology."

The idea came to her after pianist James Rhodes made dismissive comments in an interview about the popularity of reggaeton and Bad Bunny. Gata offered her rebuttal in the Los Angeles Times and crafted an instrumental album meant to showcase the genre's complexity and evolution. She's submitted the album for Grammy consideration in the contemporary instrumental composition categories.

"I recognize that I'm stepping into a realm with people who don't necessarily want me there," she says of entering the fray as a musical artist. "But I'm not focused on those people. I'm loved by a lot of people. So, I'm not entering con una ansiedad que todo el mundo me odia (with anxiety about everyone hating me) — that's not where my brain is. But I am aware of the fact that I'm critiquing people, and now I'm in their space at an artistic level. That's interesting. But also, I said what I said, and was I wrong?"

Perreo 101 Pari. 10 p.m. Thursday, October 17, at the Clevelander, 1020 Ocean Dr., Miami Beach; 305-532-4006; reggaetonconlagata.com. Admission is free with RSVP via posh.vip.