Super Bowl LX on Sunday offered more than just a football game. The half-time show stage featured the historic all Spanish performance by Grammy-award winning artist Bad Bunny.
The Puerto Rican icon is known as an international entertainer and an activist for many marginalized communities.
“Part of what makes him popular is that his music inspires people to dance,” said Jade Power-Sotomayor, PhD, director of Chicanx and Latinx Studies at UC San Diego.
She sat down with NBC 7 for an interview about her research and study of Bad Bunny’s work. That includes his Grammy win last week for Debí Tirar Más Fotos” — the first Spanish-language album to earn Album of the Year.
“When people are dancing, they don’t have to necessarily know how to speak Spanish or know how to speak English for that matter,” Power-Sotomayor said.
In 2023, the UCSD professor joined other dancers at the Grammys performing with the Puerto Rican superstar who she calls by his birth name, Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio. She said she was honored to be part of that performance and proud of his win this year when he condemned the actions of ICE during his acceptance speech.
Jade Power-SotomayorJade Power-Sotomayor
Backstage at the 2023 Grammy Awards, Jade Power-Sotomayor (bottom left in the purple skirt) prepared to take the stage with Bad Bunny, performing “plena,” a traditional Puerto Rican drum-dance form.
“It shows an artist who has worked not only for his own individual glory but to honor the culture and people he came from. Yes, Puerto Ricans are American, but it’s also what many have called for a long time a second class citizenship,” Power-Sotomayor said.
“But whether or not they are American, (immigrants) deserve to have their humanity recognized.
The NFL recognized Bad Bunny this weekend for the world to see.
Power-Sotomayor reflected saying, “we often point to how a performance may or may not change the world. But, it certainly gives us a glimpse of what that change might feel like in the moment.”