October 18, 2021 • 13 mins
Of all the places where the Reggae en Español movement could have gotten its start, a tricked-out American school bus is way down on the list. But that’s exactly what happened.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Previously on a flow. We was in a Canalzo until
I was like seventeen. Then we moved to Panama, who
my grandma was hard. She told me, look, you Panama,
You're not American. You gotta learn Spanish and made friends
and those friends made it more easier for me. Regga
(00:25):
sam Frankito Renato was always the best of a lot
of stuff in Panama. So when it comes to who
was the first man to record in Panama, that was
ran out of all the places you could think of
(00:45):
where the movement could have gotten it start, a school
bus is probably all the way down at the bottom
of the list, next to I don't know, Lithuania. And
we're not talking about just any school bus, you know,
tricked out American school bus, Yeah, the yellow ones. That's
because for the past forty years, school buses that get
pulled off the road in the United States are given
(01:07):
a second light. In Central America. In Panama City, American
school buses were given a major makeover and then put
into circulation as privately owned commuter busts. To attract customers.
The super competitive bus owners painted the outside with graffiti,
installed loudass music systems inside, and drove like demons. I
(01:30):
mean the buses were literally called the alos Rojos. In
the early eighties, a young crew of up and coming
musicians decided that ni Alo Rojos were the perfect place
to make their mark. This is a flow, a journey
to the roots of Reedon. Hi. My name is Lee Luciano.
(01:51):
I'm a CBS News correspondent born and raised in Puerto Rico,
the cradle of Reydon, and you're listening to episode three
The Avlos Rojo. The Canal turned Panama into a global crossroads.
People from all over the world settled there and it
(02:13):
became a wonderfully diverse place. Of course, you have Latinos,
but also immigrants from China, the Middle East, and hundreds
of thousands of people from Jamaica and the Caribbean, the
descendants of the workers who actually built the Panama Canal.
The music in Panama is just as varied as its people.
(02:36):
The streets are ringing with calypso, merenge, sisa, and of
course reggae. My family originally from Panama, my background and
my ancestors they are Jamaicans. This is Samguard Biscomb Daily,
known artistically as reggae sam So that's how our ancestors
(03:01):
by billing the canal when in bringing their own music
and that so the black population have a similiarity to
Jamaicans as in what we eat, what we cook, the
way we speak. I can tell you like, hey, how
you doing, and Jamaican would say why go on? And
in Panama in my dialect as we call Patua is
(03:23):
why you're doing, Why you're doing? You see, Sam grew
up in the Panama City neighborhood called Rio Oaho Riobaho.
In my head to picture it is a black community.
It was a black Colisha English speaking. I'm not saying
Spanish wasn't there, but you have you better, you better
put it up. Everybody was speaking Patua. Among Sam's closest
(03:50):
friends in Rio Oaho or Grenado. We met him last
episode in Frankido. In the late seventies. Sam had already
called the musical Bug and his two friends were big
into dancing. They performed at local affairs under the name
Reinado and the four Stars Frankito and Renato. They used
(04:10):
to dance. The fever did not start as reggae. Reggae
was just an artist more in the program, but the
essence was sold electric, buggaloo and break dance. I'm talking
about seventy seven, seventy seventy nine, going into the eighty.
That was the essence. Everything was dancing because the big
(04:33):
influence was Calypso. Through his dancing gigs, Renado met an
older DJ who invited him to work at a local
nightclub in Jamaica. The person selecting the songs is called
the selector, and the DJ is the person hyping up
or toasting the crap out of bare necessity. Renado learned
how to do both from Djadanga. He used to put
(04:55):
these twelve inch instrumental from Jamaica and star talking on
top of the instrumental and telling these girls to lift
their hands and move their bodies, like, hey, one on
my end there, what's up? Kama said, you know, move
that ass baby, you know the dance floor, and you know,
(05:16):
he used to do that, and he told me, I
gotta learn to do that. So then I used to
came in like three o'clock in the morning and he like, hey,
put some music on, and he used to leave for
the girls and you know and do his you know stuff.
Soon Ranato got his hands on a mixer and learned
how to blend the different types of songs. His audience
was asking for a Haitian song with a meringe, a
(05:38):
calypso with the Jackson five sisa and soul. And then
everybody start knowing me as this little kid that is
mixing and he's he's the queam of the crop, one
of the newest DJs. Before we go any further, I'd
like to take a moment to go back to the
dij the Red Devils. Remember I told you they were
(05:59):
the American school buses brought to Panama, that they were
privately owned, often by the driver, and that they were
tricked out with huge speakers, lights and graffiti. Well, there's
something to be said about the ultra competitive drivers themselves
and how far they'd go to out badass each other.
Diablo roe is the bus, the regular Panama bus that
(06:23):
would take you downtown uptown, take you back home. And
it's a mean way to say Diablo Rojo because they
used to speed. Sometime you try to stop, get this
bus stop to get here, and they will pass a
bus stop even though you say hey, bus stop, bus stop,
because they're running racing with another bus. Not to go
(06:45):
ahead to the next stop to get the people before him,
and it caused a lot of accidents, a lot of debts,
you know. And that's why this name Diablo Rojo came
because like the red devil, the red devils are I'm
would say, a uniquely Panamenian thing. Turns out, one of
(07:06):
the drivers in New Ronaldo and wanted him to make
a mixtape so he could blast the music on the
bus while he drove his passengers to work. The driver
wanted the best music from a hot DJ like Ronado,
but he also had another ask. Just tell me if
this sounds familiar. Callito from about was my friend, and
he wanted a song because he had two women, and
(07:27):
he wanted a song that would say that he's the best.
He has a lot of women and that he was
the number one, you know. So I would like try
to get it intrumentum, and when we got it, like
write a song like you know, you know what I'm saying.
(07:54):
So that's how he started. And then after everybody wanted
their tape like that with their name on it, of
course they did. Soon Brenado was making tapes and songs
for everyone. Five dollars of hop and reggae, Sam got
in on the action as well. That was the style
LaMDA el momento, laonda, you know the groove. You know,
(08:18):
this is shit right now, this what's going on and
that's oh, the reggae influence start coming in. In the
early eighties. Reggae was hot in the streets of Rio
Oaho and throughout the Jamaican community in Panama. You could
hear about Barley Steel, Paul's and Gregory Isaac's just walking
on the street, but not so much on Spanish radio.
(08:39):
Two things would help change that. First, dance hall records
from Jamaica started to trickle into the community in Rio Bajo.
From the likes of Shaba Ranks and especially yellow Man,
reggae was a boom. Then came yellow Man and broke
the ice for the dancehall music y and we started
(09:06):
making songs off of his versions that he had. Back then,
records had an A side and a B side. The
A side contained the master music and the vocals. The
B side often just had the instrumental version. Rnado, Reggie
Sam and their crew used those rhythms to record their
songs in Spanish. First, I used to be improvising to
(09:28):
you know, say I didn't know what the sings, you know.
And then I started writing because when I had like
my flight and I learned that he's talking about I'm
leaving on a chimplain and I know when I'll be
back again, I said, oh, I'll do the Spanish. So
I was like, man boy, oh yeah, you know, says
(09:49):
Voya Regy Sand and Bran Kid. Oh mummy, you know
what I'm saying. I will start like that, And but
my Spanish was still raw, you know, and it sounded
funny because he was like, Hey, the Griggles singing in Spanish.
You know, here's Reggie Sam doing his version of Shabba
Ranks is wicked in the bed Hi yam bad bad
(10:10):
and now wikid in nobdo wikied bad and Bundy nabed
soul and I at the moment, I just saw Loco.
The second thing that happened was that they needed to
get on the radio. They had cut their teeth under
(10:30):
the olds rojos and now they were ready for the
next step. And they weren't just going to get there
by translating English songs into Spanish. They had to write
their own songs. And here's a good moment to explain
something super important. It's nineteen eighty three and Panama is
ruled effectively by Manuel Noriega, a shady guy with shady
(10:51):
contacts ranging from paulos Koar to the CIA. He was
a general man. He was a general of the county.
Remember in those day, Latin Americas was full of military
um generals instead of presidents. They used to boss the countries.
He was the guy that was the number one in
Panama City. It's a dictatorship. Noriega even set up his
(11:15):
own secret police, the depart Or Danny. On paper, they
were supposed to be investigating and solving crimes, but under
Noriega they would resort to torture and assassinations. So Renato,
the kid raised on the soft streets of the Canal
Zone who liked to break downs and DJ at nightclubs,
(11:37):
decides to sing a song about Panama's most feared police
force in Danny Next Time on a Flow. And it
was in tapes in buses, and it got so popular
that radio stations started playing it. The military was the bosses,
and once they told my boss we won the guy
(11:59):
that sings El Dani, and my boss said what, yeah, yeah,
we wanted to gether asap. Okay a Flow is a
production of Exile Content Studio in partnership with iHeartRadio's Michael
Tura podcast Network. The show is hosted by me Lilia
Luciano and was created and produced by Btanny's De Julius
(12:22):
Production and sound designed by Diso, Additional production by David Quinones,
original music by Truco Production, supervision by Alvaro Cespedes. Executive
producers for Excel Content Studio are Nondevila Eagle and Alejandro Riwi.
Executive producers for iHeartMedia or Connel Burne and to Sell Bounces.
(12:43):
For more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Previously on a flow. We was in a Canalzo until
I was like seventeen. Then we moved to Panama, who
my grandma was hard. She told me, look, you Panama,
You're not American. You gotta learn Spanish and made friends
and those friends made it more easier for me. Regga
(00:25):
sam Frankito Renato was always the best of a lot
of stuff in Panama. So when it comes to who
was the first man to record in Panama, that was
ran out of all the places you could think of
(00:45):
where the movement could have gotten it start, a school
bus is probably all the way down at the bottom
of the list, next to I don't know, Lithuania. And
we're not talking about just any school bus, you know,
tricked out American school bus, Yeah, the yellow ones. That's
because for the past forty years, school buses that get
pulled off the road in the United States are given
(01:07):
a second light. In Central America. In Panama City, American
school buses were given a major makeover and then put
into circulation as privately owned commuter busts. To attract customers.
The super competitive bus owners painted the outside with graffiti,
installed loudass music systems inside, and drove like demons. I
(01:30):
mean the buses were literally called the alos Rojos. In
the early eighties, a young crew of up and coming
musicians decided that ni Alo Rojos were the perfect place
to make their mark. This is a flow, a journey
to the roots of Reedon. Hi. My name is Lee Luciano.
(01:51):
I'm a CBS News correspondent born and raised in Puerto Rico,
the cradle of Reydon, and you're listening to episode three
The Avlos Rojo. The Canal turned Panama into a global crossroads.
People from all over the world settled there and it
(02:13):
became a wonderfully diverse place. Of course, you have Latinos,
but also immigrants from China, the Middle East, and hundreds
of thousands of people from Jamaica and the Caribbean, the
descendants of the workers who actually built the Panama Canal.
The music in Panama is just as varied as its people.
(02:36):
The streets are ringing with calypso, merenge, sisa, and of
course reggae. My family originally from Panama, my background and
my ancestors they are Jamaicans. This is Samguard Biscomb Daily,
known artistically as reggae sam So that's how our ancestors
(03:01):
by billing the canal when in bringing their own music
and that so the black population have a similiarity to
Jamaicans as in what we eat, what we cook, the
way we speak. I can tell you like, hey, how
you doing, and Jamaican would say why go on? And
in Panama in my dialect as we call Patua is
(03:23):
why you're doing, Why you're doing? You see, Sam grew
up in the Panama City neighborhood called Rio Oaho Riobaho.
In my head to picture it is a black community.
It was a black Colisha English speaking. I'm not saying
Spanish wasn't there, but you have you better, you better
put it up. Everybody was speaking Patua. Among Sam's closest
(03:50):
friends in Rio Oaho or Grenado. We met him last
episode in Frankido. In the late seventies. Sam had already
called the musical Bug and his two friends were big
into dancing. They performed at local affairs under the name
Reinado and the four Stars Frankito and Renato. They used
(04:10):
to dance. The fever did not start as reggae. Reggae
was just an artist more in the program, but the
essence was sold electric, buggaloo and break dance. I'm talking
about seventy seven, seventy seventy nine, going into the eighty.
That was the essence. Everything was dancing because the big
(04:33):
influence was Calypso. Through his dancing gigs, Renado met an
older DJ who invited him to work at a local
nightclub in Jamaica. The person selecting the songs is called
the selector, and the DJ is the person hyping up
or toasting the crap out of bare necessity. Renado learned
how to do both from Djadanga. He used to put
(04:55):
these twelve inch instrumental from Jamaica and star talking on
top of the instrumental and telling these girls to lift
their hands and move their bodies, like, hey, one on
my end there, what's up? Kama said, you know, move
that ass baby, you know the dance floor, and you know,
(05:16):
he used to do that, and he told me, I
gotta learn to do that. So then I used to
came in like three o'clock in the morning and he like, hey,
put some music on, and he used to leave for
the girls and you know and do his you know stuff.
Soon Ranato got his hands on a mixer and learned
how to blend the different types of songs. His audience
was asking for a Haitian song with a meringe, a
(05:38):
calypso with the Jackson five sisa and soul. And then
everybody start knowing me as this little kid that is
mixing and he's he's the queam of the crop, one
of the newest DJs. Before we go any further, I'd
like to take a moment to go back to the
dij the Red Devils. Remember I told you they were
(05:59):
the American school buses brought to Panama, that they were
privately owned, often by the driver, and that they were
tricked out with huge speakers, lights and graffiti. Well, there's
something to be said about the ultra competitive drivers themselves
and how far they'd go to out badass each other.
Diablo roe is the bus, the regular Panama bus that
(06:23):
would take you downtown uptown, take you back home. And
it's a mean way to say Diablo Rojo because they
used to speed. Sometime you try to stop, get this
bus stop to get here, and they will pass a
bus stop even though you say hey, bus stop, bus stop,
because they're running racing with another bus. Not to go
(06:45):
ahead to the next stop to get the people before him,
and it caused a lot of accidents, a lot of debts,
you know. And that's why this name Diablo Rojo came
because like the red devil, the red devils are I'm
would say, a uniquely Panamenian thing. Turns out, one of
(07:06):
the drivers in New Ronaldo and wanted him to make
a mixtape so he could blast the music on the
bus while he drove his passengers to work. The driver
wanted the best music from a hot DJ like Ronado,
but he also had another ask. Just tell me if
this sounds familiar. Callito from about was my friend, and
he wanted a song because he had two women, and
(07:27):
he wanted a song that would say that he's the best.
He has a lot of women and that he was
the number one, you know. So I would like try
to get it intrumentum, and when we got it, like
write a song like you know, you know what I'm saying.
(07:54):
So that's how he started. And then after everybody wanted
their tape like that with their name on it, of
course they did. Soon Brenado was making tapes and songs
for everyone. Five dollars of hop and reggae, Sam got
in on the action as well. That was the style
LaMDA el momento, laonda, you know the groove. You know,
(08:18):
this is shit right now, this what's going on and
that's oh, the reggae influence start coming in. In the
early eighties. Reggae was hot in the streets of Rio
Oaho and throughout the Jamaican community in Panama. You could
hear about Barley Steel, Paul's and Gregory Isaac's just walking
on the street, but not so much on Spanish radio.
(08:39):
Two things would help change that. First, dance hall records
from Jamaica started to trickle into the community in Rio Bajo.
From the likes of Shaba Ranks and especially yellow Man,
reggae was a boom. Then came yellow Man and broke
the ice for the dancehall music y and we started
(09:06):
making songs off of his versions that he had. Back then,
records had an A side and a B side. The
A side contained the master music and the vocals. The
B side often just had the instrumental version. Rnado, Reggie
Sam and their crew used those rhythms to record their
songs in Spanish. First, I used to be improvising to
(09:28):
you know, say I didn't know what the sings, you know.
And then I started writing because when I had like
my flight and I learned that he's talking about I'm
leaving on a chimplain and I know when I'll be
back again, I said, oh, I'll do the Spanish. So
I was like, man boy, oh yeah, you know, says
(09:49):
Voya Regy Sand and Bran Kid. Oh mummy, you know
what I'm saying. I will start like that, And but
my Spanish was still raw, you know, and it sounded
funny because he was like, Hey, the Griggles singing in Spanish.
You know, here's Reggie Sam doing his version of Shabba
Ranks is wicked in the bed Hi yam bad bad
(10:10):
and now wikid in nobdo wikied bad and Bundy nabed
soul and I at the moment, I just saw Loco.
The second thing that happened was that they needed to
get on the radio. They had cut their teeth under
(10:30):
the olds rojos and now they were ready for the
next step. And they weren't just going to get there
by translating English songs into Spanish. They had to write
their own songs. And here's a good moment to explain
something super important. It's nineteen eighty three and Panama is
ruled effectively by Manuel Noriega, a shady guy with shady
(10:51):
contacts ranging from paulos Koar to the CIA. He was
a general man. He was a general of the county.
Remember in those day, Latin Americas was full of military
um generals instead of presidents. They used to boss the countries.
He was the guy that was the number one in
Panama City. It's a dictatorship. Noriega even set up his
(11:15):
own secret police, the depart Or Danny. On paper, they
were supposed to be investigating and solving crimes, but under
Noriega they would resort to torture and assassinations. So Renato,
the kid raised on the soft streets of the Canal
Zone who liked to break downs and DJ at nightclubs,
(11:37):
decides to sing a song about Panama's most feared police
force in Danny Next Time on a Flow. And it
was in tapes in buses, and it got so popular
that radio stations started playing it. The military was the bosses,
and once they told my boss we won the guy
(11:59):
that sings El Dani, and my boss said what, yeah, yeah,
we wanted to gether asap. Okay a Flow is a
production of Exile Content Studio in partnership with iHeartRadio's Michael
Tura podcast Network. The show is hosted by me Lilia
Luciano and was created and produced by Btanny's De Julius
(12:22):
Production and sound designed by Diso, Additional production by David Quinones,
original music by Truco Production, supervision by Alvaro Cespedes. Executive
producers for Excel Content Studio are Nondevila Eagle and Alejandro Riwi.
Executive producers for iHeartMedia or Connel Burne and to Sell Bounces.
(12:43):
For more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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