Past the Cuban diaspora, the style often called reparto is overwhelmingly unknown. However on the streets of Havana and Hialeah, Miami, reparto is inescapable, pulsing from balconies and moveable audio system on the seaside.
Born in Cuba’s working-class neighborhoods — recognized colloquially as repartos — this hyperkinetic fusion of reggaetón, timba and Afro-Cuban rhythms has change into the island’s rating. Within the mid-2000s, artists like Chocolate MC and Elvis Manuel constructed the style’s sound on distorted synth stabs, shouted call-and-response hooks, and the distinct Cuban clave beat that makes your physique transfer earlier than your mind may even catch up.
It’s additionally change into a platform for youth navigating shortage, surveillance and goals of escaping poverty. The lyrics, characteristically and unapologetically obscene, mirror the realities of life in marginalized communities. However alongside its rhythmic bravado, reparto’s express language usually veers into the dehumanizing and misogynistic.
The music facilities on girls, however as a rule, as objects: the perra to beat, the diabla to tame, the culo to catalog in express element. And it’s no shock: The style’s blunt portrayal of ladies mirrors the machismo deeply embedded in on a regular basis Cuban life.
It’s a chorus you’re certain to listen to in any and each nightclub: “¿Donde están las mujeres?” However the subsequent time 10 reparteros hyperlink up for a monitor, they most likely gained’t name a lady. Inside a style that revolves so closely round their our bodies, girls’s voices nonetheless stay uncommon.
So, ¿dónde están las mujeres? Or, the place are the ladies making reparto?
“Chocolate is the king, however who’s the queen?” says Seidy Carrera, recognized artistically as Seidy La Niña. “There’s an area that must be crammed with girls. There’s no f—ing girls!”
On the onset of reparto, early reparteras like Melissa and Claudia slipped temporary feminine cameos into membership anthems. Greater than a decade later, as a consequence of Cuba’s solely current, and nonetheless extraordinarily restricted, web entry, these artists and their collaborations have a seemingly untraceable digital footprint. Nonetheless, most playlists orbit male voices, and collaborations hardly ever invite girls to the sales space: “When reparteros come collectively on a monitor, they by no means name a lady,” she says.
Carrera, 32, was born within the reparto El Cotorro and raised in Miami since she was 6. The self-proclaimed queen of reparto, the paradox defines her profession: She fights for area in a scene whose enchantment lies in her uncooked neighborhood realism, however detractors query her authenticity as a gringa, or as they’d name her, yuma.
“I really feel resistance every single day, each single day,” she says. In response, she reclaims the discriminatory language used towards her; onstage, she chants “más perra que bonita,” flipping the curse-word from insult to empowerment.
“It’s empowering to say, I’m extra perra than fairly. To me, being a perra is being a lady who’s unique, who makes her personal cash. In my case, … no one opened the door for me, no one gave me a hand.”
For Havana-based singer-composer Melanie Santiler, 24, the double customary hits her earlier than she will be able to even sing her first word: “I really feel that I’ve to do twice as properly. I’ve to place in double the thought, double the trouble, double the expertise, all the time having one thing extra to say,” she says.
“It’s exhausting. It’s exhausting being a lady, having to stand up and inform your self, rattling, I’ve to look fairly and put collectively. I spent my complete life in class with an onion bun as a result of I didn’t need to do my hair,” Santiler says and laughs, messy bun flopping round her face.
Reaching virtually 5 million YouTube views on her 2025 viral collab, “Todo se Supera” with Velito el Bufón, she’s damaged into the reparto area as one of many style’s most distinctive voices. Beside this rise, she’s confronted a newfound strain to decorate a means she usually wouldn’t, a magnificence customary her masculine counterparts don’t face.
Aliaisys Alvarez Hernández — higher often called Ozunaje — says she doesn’t face the identical criticism within the city Cuban music scene, possible as a consequence of her sexuality and extra masculine look. “Reparto is a style for males, that’s how I see it,” she says. “I gown like a person, I virtually stay my life like a person, so what I write resembles what males are already saying. That additionally gave me an impulse, the place I really feel like extra female artists, they must work more durable.”
A former rhythmic gymnast from La Habana, Hernández, 23, stumbled into music when associates recorded her singing a demo of “Cosas del Amor” in her front room. Somebody uploaded the video, it went viral, and all of the sudden, she had a profession. Since that begin, Hernández refuses to solely be in contrast with different reparteras.
Her aim has all the time been to be measured towards males, since “that’s who individuals really take heed to.” Dressing in historically masculine clothes, paired with a deep, raspy supply, helps her lyrics resonate with locals with out the additional hurdle of hyper-sexualized expectations.
Hernández’s androgynous wardrobe and open queerness carry one other layer of potential discrimination, however regardless of the rampant homophobia persistent in present-day Cuba, she doesn’t really feel a lot resistance. “The worst phrase they throw at me is tortillera, but it surely doesn’t have an effect on me,” she says, including, “Individuals like my type, they like that I gown like a man. All people tells me, you’ve got tremendo circulation, I like your aguaje, so I haven’t confronted any bullying. By no means.”
Misogynistic currents in reparto mirror these in early reggaetón, reflecting the common avenue machismo. The style’s marginal roots complicate blanket condemnations, because the similar raunchy lyrics usually encode critiques of sophistication exclusion. Nonetheless, reaching larger levels would require modifying probably the most gratuitous slurs, if solely to broaden the music’s export potential. At the least, Ozunaje thinks so.
“Reparto got here from individuals who had been poor, who had nothing, who had been determined to get out. No person imagined it could get this huge. Now it’s reaching the entire world, so the vocabulary has to evolve,” she says.
Santiler echoes this critique. “It’s change into actually repetitive. I believe proper now, everyone seems to be speaking about the identical factor. It’s been very easy. Facilista,” she says, utilizing the Spanish time period for taking the simple means out. Santiler loves reparto’s swing, however calls most of it objectifying, pointing to Unhealthy Bunny’s “Andrea” and “Neverita,” together with C. Tangana’s “El Madrileño,” as proof that city music can develop past bed room conquests.
“The road already says these items, and reparto simply writes it. It’s a picture of what’s taking place. However I grew up with different varieties of music and different varieties of references, so I’d prefer to develop past that, to make one thing recent.”
Santiler provides that the idea of reparto, each in her gratitude and her criticism, comes from delight.
“I like Cuba, I like my nation. The present era of Cuba doesn’t reject their id — they’re doing the other. They need to create a brand new tradition, to create a brand new motion, they usually need the world to know Cuba once more,” she says.
