Chicago’s most surprising Super Bowl pregame party is happening between the stacks. The Chicago Public Library is hosting “Puerto Rico x Bad Bunny: Beats & History,” a book-club-style series that pairs the superstar’s music with a fast, accessible dive into Puerto Rican history. Sessions are scheduled to wrap just before Bad Bunny’s halftime performance, with the goal of putting the island’s story front and center for Chicago audiences.
According to the Chicago Public Library, the series meets tonight at 6 p.m. at the West Belmont branch and again Friday at 2 p.m. at the Harold Washington Library Center. Registration is free but required. The system notes that it has already hosted earlier sessions this season, all under its One Book, One Chicago umbrella.
Program Mixes Pop And Archive
Librarian Mariella Colón leads hour-long, informal conversations that track Puerto Rican resistance and migration alongside songs from Bad Bunny’s DeBÍ Tirar Más Fotos. More than 300 people have taken part in the library’s virtual and in-person sessions, with attendees logging on from as far as New Jersey and Florida, according to WBEZ. The program leans on historian Jorell Meléndez-Badillo’s notes and the album’s visualizers as key teaching tools.
Scholarship Behind The Visuals
Jorell Meléndez-Badillo, a historian at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and author of Puerto Rico: A National History, helped design 17 text-based visualizers that run with the album’s tracks. “Benito doesn’t need the U.S. market. The U.S. market needs Benito,” Meléndez-Badillo told the Sun-Times, a line the library uses to frame the album’s political edge. His work is explicitly cited in the program as a bridge from individual songs to longer debates about colonialism, migration, and economic policy.
Why The Timing Matters
Bad Bunny is slated to headline the Apple Music Super Bowl LX halftime show this weekend at Levi’s Stadium, as reported by Pitchfork. His album DeBÍ Tirar Más Fotos recently took home the Grammy for Album of the Year, the first all-Spanish-language record to win the prize, per GRAMMY.com. That mix of a massive global stage and a decorated, politically charged album has turned the library’s gatherings into a kind of civic teach-in rather than a simple fan hangout.
For Chicago’s Puerto Rican communities, the series has functioned as more than a curated listening session. It is a way to bring diasporic memory and everyday politics directly into public programming. Colón told WBEZ that she hopes participants walk away understanding that Puerto Rico “remains a colony in the 21st century,” and that popular music can double as a classroom for that reality.
