Healing Perreo

Abstract

A DJ Sad Boy set is a queer portal where femmes of color, suciedad1, and raunch aesthetics reign supreme.2 The Bay Area-based Chicanx multi-media artist and DJ, who currently lives in New York City, has cultivated a sound that draws from Bay Area and 1990s hip hop, classic reggaeton and underground neoperreo, dancehall and R&B. The way these forms come together in a Sad Boy set, however, is informed by rave and their previous DJ work mixing reggae and ragga-based happy hardcore as Kid Orange in the early 2000s. For Sad Boy, the spaces of rave constituted an extended family. Music was an escape for them from a violent, machista and homophobic biological family context. Being raised Catholic also instilled shame.For many of us, music does the kind of spiritual work that heteropatriarchal religious traditions fail to do, and it is perhaps this background that makes Sad Boy sets so appealing to “queer people who apprehend the risky medium of the night to explore, know, and stage their bodies, genders, and sexualities in the face of systemic and social negation.”3 Healing occurs through perreo’s hip(g)nosis.4,5Sad Boy’s practice interacts with the growing underground music culture “neoperreo” that was spearheaded by performers such as Tomasa del Real and DJs Lizz and Sustancia. Emerging from Chile and Argentina with satellite hubs in Los Angeles and Mexico City, the genre merges reggaeton with global dance music and an emphasis on femmes and sex. The femmes at the forefront of neoperreo depart from conventional standards of Latina beauty, even within the reggaeton world, by donning numerous tattoos, S/M gear, and a goth aesthetic influenced by the digital realm. Through sound, Sad Boy and the cyber-putas of neoperreo create communal spaces where rave culture extends to perreo and vice versa.I had been following Sad Boy on Instagram (@dj_sadboy) for several years before having the privilege of enjoying a set in San Diego in 2018. The feeling it instilled in me and my group of girlfriends was pure joy; the delight of a Biggie tune following a classic by Don Omar, and Beanie Man transitioning into La Goony Chonga. We felt full, sexy and alive.I was grateful to be able to access these feelings later during the pandemic while alone, tuning into one of the many late-night sets Sad Boy streamed from their apartment on Instagram live, and later, as part of a virtual symposium I organized on Perreo as Queer Feminist Resistance. DJ Sad Boy’s practice, which is also shaped by their experiences as a sex worker, exemplifies the power of queer and feminist Latinx art making, which alchemizes shame into creative erotics of liberation. The machista messaging of mainstream reggaeton and hip hop become resignified on the dance floor, as femmes make it their own. No one is pure, and no one is damaged.DJ Sad Boy’s approach to mixing departs from the mechanized and routine standard of much EDM by employing long transitions and varied structures. In doing so, they bring a visual artist’s eye to the sonic by using the found material of music to create a collage, with the cuts and mixes as the “visible seam.”6 In fact, Sad Boy’s DJing extends from their photography work, which centers on queer femmes of color in California.Sad Boy and I have built a femme friendship over several projects we’ve collaborated on. In our interview, which occurred in December 2020 right around their birthday, we discuss how traveling within and outside of the U.S. has affected their sound, how the pandemic has affected their work, and the creation of Noche de Travesuras (Night of Transgressions), an underground queer perreo party that they established in 2017 along with queer LA-based artists DJ Baby Uniq and Jesuabones. After a long hiatus during the pandemic, the party has since resumed in New York.