Well if you haven’t heard about it by now . . . I guess you missed it. Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime performance was seen by 135 million people in 200 countries. It felt like a cultural revolution.

The whole show was in Spanish, remarkable in itself for American television, and recognized the fact that ‘God Bless America’ includes all the countries of south, central and north America. He listed each one in turn: Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Brazil, Columbia, Venezuela, Guyana, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti, the Antilles, Jamaica, United States, Canada y mi patria (homeland) Puerto Rico. We are all Americans.

See the full performance here.

To be honest I was initially put off by all the wild dancing and everything being in Spanish. And I wasn’t a big fan of reggaeton, in fact I didn’t even know what it was but soon enough I got caught up in the joyous energy and felt the spirit of Puerto Rico surging thru the songs.

Reggaeton as a musical genre had its origins among the youth of Panama back in the eighties, a mixture of hip hop and Caribbean rhythms, but then came of age in Puerto Rico. It was passionate, impetuous and authentic, just like the Puerto Ricans and artists like DJ Negro and Daddy Yankee and Daddy Gasolina and others from the barrios and housing projects of San Juan set it on course. The police tried to repress it, called it a danger to society, didn’t work.

Then Bad Bunny, aka Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio, came along. He was born in 1994 and grew up in the small town of Vega Baja on the north coast of Puerto Rico, 40 minutes west of the capital San Juan. He got his stage name from when he was a little kid and forced to wear a bunny costume that he was not happy about. Ha, ha hilarious.

He started writing music and uploading it to Sound Cloud when he was 14. By the time he was 22 he had signed on to a recording contract and his career started taking off: collaborating with other artists, hosting shows, performing gigs. He has since become the most streamed musician in the world, that’s what I read somewhere. A few days before his Super Bowl appearance he won album of the year at the Grammies. Add that to his 5 previous Grammies. He’s done movies, TV shows, toured the world. He had a 31 day residency at the José Miguel Agrelot Coliseum in San Juan last year that drew over 600,000 visitors to the island and contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to the local economy. He’s totally famous and using his celebrity to make the world a better place with his Good Bunny Foundation that empowers children and young people thru music, sports and the arts.

Well great, good Bad Bunny, but why am I writing about all this? I’m writing about all this because he’s helping to change the conversation and I think that’s important. I’m writing this because we need to recognize our humanity, we need talk about it, we need to feel the spirit and we need to feel the truth of our present (precarious) situation. Our sweet lives are intertwined with the circumstances that surround us and we need to recognize that.

I’m writing this because the existential issues of our time requires it. Do I have to go over the entire tedious list of existential issues? Nuclear weapons, the climate crisis, income inequality (which causes wars), environmental destruction (which causes mass extinction), divisiveness (which causes dysfunctional governments), economic policies that are unsustainable (means they’re gonna crash) - all global problems. No America first. All of us first, everybody first. We have to solve these problems together.

Bad Bunny's voice rose up strong and clear in response to the degradation and disrespect that has become so dominant in our national dialogue. The damage that has been done by the magafication of our country will last for generations or atleast decades. It’s tragic. And it’s urgent that we begin building community now, community based on shared humanity not some selfish, cultish, elitist, nationalistic perversion of humanity.

So, ok, maybe you don’t like Bad Bunny and you don’t get the reggaeton thing but how could anyone vote against diversity, inclusion and empowerment? How could anybody disagree that ‘love is stronger than hate’. Yes it’s just a platitude on one level but this is how change happens - by talking about it in the cafes and the churches and the substacks of the world. Change doesn’t come from nowhere and if you don’t think change is needed then, my friend, you’re living on a different planet from me.

And everything doesn’t have to be political. There is celebration, there is spontaneous joy, there is dancing (each in their own way). There is music which has the power to bring us all together regardless of our perceived differences. There is love that is stronger than hate.

And like he said at the beginning of his show: “My name is Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio and if today I’m here at the 60th Super Bowl it’s because I never, never stopped believing in me. And you should, you should believe in yourself too. You’re more valuable than you think, believe me. Heh.”

If you would like to support the rohn report, you can become a paid subscriber

or make a one time donation. It’s deeply appreciated. Thank you.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rohn.substack.com/subscribe