Students from Associate Professor Vanessa Díaz’s “Bad Bunny and Resistance in Puerto Rico” class attended the Bad Bunny concert on March 14, 2024, at the Crypto.com Arena. Díaz had prepared them well – her course, offered at LMU since spring 2023, explores the cultural significance of the record-breaking artist to highlight the complex historical and contemporary realities of Puerto Rico.
When the “Most Wanted Tour” was announced, Díaz knew that attending with her students would give them a deeper understanding of the history, art, and politics they have been studying in the classroom. She immediately began brainstorming ways to make it happen. “We are living through a historic moment for Latin music,” said Díaz. “Students have expressed to me that the class has been transformational for them in both personal and intellectual ways, and I knew that experiencing Bad Bunny live would only enhance that. I was determined to turn the concert into my classroom, and that’s exactly what we did. It was a dynamic and community-building experience, and I’m so grateful I could get the support to give my students this opportunity.”
The concert was immensely moving, educational, and fun for the students who had been studying Bad Bunny and his music for weeks. In the excerpts below, two students, Ashley Buschhorn and Mateo Luis-Planas, share their reflections.
Nobody Knows What Will Happen Tomorrow
By: Ashley Buschhorn ‘24, journalism major and computer science minor
If you had told me a year ago that I would be attending a Bad Bunny concert, I would have laughed because I didn’t even listen to Bad Bunny. If you had told me I would be attending as part of a class, I would have been stunned. But as I sat alongside my fellow students and Professor Vanessa Díaz, awaiting the entrance of Bad Bunny, Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, as he is known to us, I was in awe that this was my life.
Díaz’s class visited the Grammy Museum before the concert for a private tour of the exhibits. (Photo by Vanessa Díaz)
Naturally, in class, we have often discussed how Benito breaks barriers in the music industry and has become a global phenomenon. However, I’ve often wondered what makes him so special. There is a long history of incredible reggaeton artists like Daddy Yankee, Ivy Queen, and Tego Calderon, so what is it that made Bad Bunny the one that would take over the globe? As soon as he started singing, I got it. Within three songs, I was hooked.
It is hard to put into words the presence Bad Bunny has when he takes the stage. It’s electric, and you can feel his voice run through your body. As he sang “Nadie sabe lo que va a pasar mañana | Nobody knows what will happen tomorrow” to a live orchestra across the crowd from him, I finally felt like I understood Bad Bunny and why he has meant so much not only to the genre of reggaeton but to the island of Puerto Rico. I finally understood why everything I learned in the classroom was so important. He’s different. He’s honest but doesn’t always know what to say. He doesn’t post his thoughts on social media but articulates them in his lyrics and melodies. He doesn’t conform to societal expectations around gender or sexuality but can still be hypermasculine and machista at times. It’s this continual tension, the continual refusal to confine himself, that makes his concerts and his artistry so special.
When I decided to take “Bad Bunny and Resistance in Puerto Rico,” I didn’t take it for Bad Bunny. I had barely ever listened to him before the class. I took the class because I thought taking a world-renowned artist and using his career to further understand social issues and history was an incredible concept. I didn’t expect it to change my perspective on music, the United States, and colonialism and to develop a unique connection with the island of Puerto Rico and its people.
To experience Bad Bunny’s performance, I felt I could finally connect what we read and learned in the classroom to a real-world situation. To truly understand Bad Bunny, you must understand Puerto Rico’s history with colonialism, resistance, and the genre of reggaeton. You must understand the impact of Hurricane Maria, the Puerto Rican debt crisis, and the historical criminalization of reggaeton. You must understand the military occupation of Vieques, the gag law that made the Puerto Rican flag illegal, and the current island takeover by wealthy, majority white Americans who are looking for tax breaks, not to stir the local economy. Only then do you truly know the gravity of the moment when he sings, “nadie sabe lo que va a pasar mañana.” You must enjoy today because in Puerto Rico, “nobody knows what will happen tomorrow.”
La Clase de Bad Bunny Está Presente
Mateo-Luis Planas ‘26, political science major
On March 14, LMU’s “Bad Bunny and Resistance in Puerto Rico” class grew seven hundredfold. We shared a classroom with strobe lights and a full orchestra with tens of thousands of Angelenos, all eager to see Bad Bunny perform his highly anticipated ‘Most Wanted’ set.
When we arrived at the Crypto.com arena, we joined the sea of fans dressed in light-up cowboy hats in line. My heart was so proud to see masses of people show up for someone like Benito from our little island, just 100 miles long.
Before the concert began, a playlist of Boricua throwbacks echoed through the arena. With the voice of Hector Lavoe in the background, current and former “Bad Bunny and Resistance in Puerto Rico” students talked about what songs they were most excited about as we unrolled our Puerto Rican flags.
To draw on class content, Benito stayed consistent with supporting the LGBTQ+ community and his initiative to encourage visibility within the industry. He had a diverse cast of backup dancers, representing a variety of body types and performers who were visibly queer, not to mention how the costume team made little distinctions between male and female outfits throughout the production. Third on his setlist was the song “Fina” with Young Miko, and as one student pointed out on the bus ride home, Benito didn’t sing over her even though she wasn’t present at the concert. These are all intentional artistic decisions Bad Bunny makes when designing these concerts, not only to enrich the audience’s experience but to comment on the shortcomings of the reggaetón industry and society as a whole.
As an East Coast Puerto Rican living in L.A., it’s easy to feel withdrawn from our culture, especially when everything and everyone I’ve ever known feels so far away. The class not only taught me so much about my family’s history, but it also felt like a home away from home: the music, the dialect, the dancing. It’s as close to Puerto Rico as I’ve felt since I last visited. Honestly, I was surprised to hear some of the students, whom I would’ve never imagined even knew Bad Bunny, singing along to his music on the ride to the concert. They didn’t just know the words; they knew what they meant, which matters so much now. To include students of all backgrounds in dialogue about colonialism and assimilation is to universalize the anti-colonial message and spread awareness about an issue that, frankly, everyone should care about. Americans deserve to know if they are being complacent or even participating in a colonial project, and it’s impossible to take the class and not feel differently about that spring break trip you have planned.
This was a truly once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I’m so glad I got to share it with Dr. Díaz and this amazing group of students. If there’s one thing people take from this experience, I hope it’s that learning takes many forms, and when we allow it to transcend the classroom walls, we bring that learning to life and discover its tangible effects on our society.
