El General

In 2004, El General went on a farewell tour, announcing his retirement to focus on producing. However, after a few years, he seemed to have disappeared completely. A video that surfaced in 2008 features El general explaining his return to the Jehovah’s witness faith and his leave from the music scene. Franco describes his time making music as a dark era and refers to his platinum records and accolades as “trophies from the devil”. Franco is part of a wave of Latin artists (like Hector El Father and Farruko) who have left Reggaeton for religious reasons. Gata, a cultural critic and Reggaeton artist, links the trend of these artists to notions of patriarchy and machismo and feeling guilty over sexual explicit lyrics.

His breakout performance came in 1994, when he was featured on the song "Robi-Rob's Boriqua Anthem" from C+C Music Factory's album Anything Goes. During this time, he started working with Chino Rodriguez, an entrepreneur in the Latin music industry, who convinced Franco a.k.a. El General (as his close friends and family would call him), to perform a salsa song before his performance of "Robi-Rob's Boriqua Anthem". The performance was at the Madison Square Garden produced by Ralph Mercado (owner of RMM Records and who always produced large Latino events in New York). The fans were surprised that El General (Franco) sang a salsa song. Ralph Mercado gave El General more time in the tight schedule of stage allotment to do the salsa song before the scheduled performance of "Boriqua Anthem". Chino Rodriguez was able to convince Ralph Mercado to allow more time so that El General could surprise his fans.

He started his musical career when he was 19 years old, and for 17 years, his albums achieved gold status 32 times and platinum 17 times. Popular reggae in Spanish music in Panama was (and is still) called plena. Songs like "Muevelo" (1991), "Tu Pum Pum" (1991), "Rica y Apretadita" and "Te Ves Buena" are among his greatest hits. In 1992, El General received an MTV award for Best Latin Video with the great success of "Muevelo" produced by Pablo "Pabanor" Ortiz and Erick "More" Morillo. In 1993, El General won the Rap Artist of the Year Award at the Lo Nuestro Awards.

El General’s success has been tremendous and influential to the genre of Reggaeton today. After gaining international notoriety in the early 1990s, his style of Spanish Regé influenced “Underground” which would birth what we now consider Reggaeton in Puerto Rico.  El General’s success also serves as a way of understanding how important the connection between Black communities in Panama, the Caribbean (Jaimaica, Barbados, etc), and the Caribbean-American communities in New York. The influence of El General and Panamanian Spanish Regé artists,  has been noted by popular reggae artists like Maicol Superstar

The relationship between labor of Black, low-income folks in Panama City and reggaeton music has been their usage of reggae music as a form of protest. Afro-Panamanian artist Renato expressed that it was through singing reggaeton that financially struggling Black folks could protest the government and police brutality. This could be seen in the music of El General’s former band partner Renato, whose 1985 Spanish Reggae song “El D.E.N.I” recounts an instance of racial profiling with Panamanian police.

While El General was growing up Spanish Regé as a genre began to rise in Panama. In the 1980s, Spanish Reggae in Panama was the use of riddims that were popular in Jamaica and the rapping/singing of direct translations on the same beat. As Panamaians of Caribbean descent the use of Jamaican riddims was anti-establishment and enforced what Wayne Marshall says, “ ‘provides a telling set of examples of how the meanings of Jamaican reggae continue to resonate in Panama, even after translation into Spanish’ ” The use of Caribbean sounds in Spanish Regé made the genre anti-establishment and a form of resistance to a country that denied Panamians of Caribbean descent.

Edgardo Armando Franco (born 27 September 1969), better known as El General, is a Panamanian former reggae artist considered by some to be one of the fathers of "Reggae en Español". During the early 1990s, he was one of the artists who initiated the Spanish-language dancehall variety of reggae music. Early examples of this were the international and somewhat mainstream songs, "Te Ves Buena" and "Tu Pum Pum". “Tu Pum Pum" emerged after a friend of El General invited him to collaborate with a Jamaican producer that was searching for a “different sound in Panama." Both songs, performed in Spanish deejaying style, were very successful in North America. After getting his foot in the door of the commercial market, many other Spanish-language dancehall reggae artists became famous in the mainstream as well. He has a unique, easy to listen to style of dance music and has produced many well-known songs all over Latin America. This style is called reggae en Español, because he makes dancehall reggae music with Spanish-language lyrics. El General retired in 2004 and became a Jehovah's Witness.