Profetas de la cultura: Notes on the Puerto Rican Reggae of Cultura Profética

As migrant music, reggae is an ever-changing style, as it slides into the open interstices of location and time wherever it travels. In Puerto Rico, reggae has assumed local particularities, as the hands of young people redefine and differentiate it. This music brings together not only the elements that identify it as a particularly Puerto Rican reggae, but it reflects the conditions under which young people embrace it as their music. Most of the research regarding youth culture approaches their work as passive reflection of media consumption, or as antagonistic response to the adult world. These approaches view youth as a developmental stage into adulthood, and fail to capture the lived dialectic that emerges from the insights of youth themselves about their work. Through interviews with members of the Puerto Rican reggae group Cultura Profética, and a careful look at their music, lyrics, and performance practices, I ve tried to understand their work as a production of culture rather than simply consumption or resistance.