If you’re Panamanian then you’re very fucking familiar with this song. It has become one of the cornerstones of our brand of reggae (or reggaetón, depending on who you’re asking) and it was quite popular at the beginning of 2006 but just like many other reggae songs that are unleashed on the populace, it went away just as fast as it hit. I think its days were numbered in Carnavales when Daddy Yankee’s “Rompe” took over every radio station and stage in the known universe… seriously, you couldn’t walk 30 seconds without hearing the song and if you ask anyone I had talked to before Carnavales (it’s in February) I would’ve been all over that shit… that song was tits! But when you listen to it every waking moment of the day for 4 days straight it kind of, maybe, perhaps, who knows but it might burn out a little, I don’t know. Anywho, it seemed that it was the end of the road for Yasuri Yamileth… but then she met You Tube, they has steamy ghetto sex and the song went viral, shooting its jizz all over Latin America and we, as Panamanians, never found out.

Yesterday I was at the office and my co-worker (the manager for Panamanian band Capitán Ponche? I think I’ve mentioned him before) showed me a grainy picture of one Aritxaida Aparicio and he told me that she was the girl who sang Yasuri Yamileth… and he thought he knew her. Apparently she was a model and even ran for a Miss Hawaiian Tropic but he couldn’t get a better picture of her to know for sure. Enter my awesome Internet superpowers and with a simple query, asking here and there I got us a huge picture of her, posing for said pageant. Mr. Fro (bassist for Capitán Ponche) took a look at her as well as us and they confirmed that it was the girl they were talking about. As you can see, this girl is hot as hell! You will see the video below and find that the contrast is mind-blowing. In any which case, I felt I had to tell you all so I log on today with the mission of doing an article on Yasuri Yamileth for you fine folks out on the Internets so I did some digging around to look for the video so you can trip out on how ridiculous it is but not only did I find the video… I also found out a bunch of interesting shit about this “Yasuri Yamileth” that made me fall out of my seat. Remember how I keep saying that Panama is a matchbox? Well, read on, true believer!

If you’re Panamanian the chances are you don’t know much of this but if you’re from Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico (I see you, baby… shaking that ass!), Peru or even Argentina then this will be old news: right after the song died down in Panama or at around the same time, whatever since I don’t know how it all works, someone decided to put up the Yasuri Yamileth video for the song “Gillette” up on You Tube for inexplicable reasons, but I suppose they’re the same reasons why I posted “El Dislate del Ser” up in there, too: to have it seen from people outside my country. Good enough for me; so I dig in a little more and find out that the You Tube upload triggered a series of events that made the video go viral, and the Yasuri Yamileth phenomena began. It started in Venezuela and Colombia, it seems… and the appeal of it is pretty much the same one as “Snakes on a Plane” in that it’s so ridiculous yet you can’t help but enjoy it. People were all over that shit, specially when you consider how colorful our ghetto people are in both their speech and appearance so I suppose South Americans saw this just like someone would see monkeys interact in the zoo; slightly perplexed but in awe of what they’re witnessing. Whatever… the formula worked and it was an Internet hit, triggering hundreds of homemade Yasuri Yamileth parodies littered across You Tube and even one legit “remake” in Venezuela. Fuck it, I’ll show the video now:

Gotta love it. So, this video leaks out from You Tube and it turns out to be so big that, just like “Snakes on a Plane,” it leaked out into the mainstream media and they gobbled it up like a hungry pack of wolves with such intensity that Venezuela, the country where the hit was the biggest, invited her over to Caracas in order to do an interview and set the record straight about “Yasuri Yamileth”… and it turns out that the woman who stepped out of that plane was not the girl ont he video AT ALL. Maybe I’m late to the party but fuck you, there’s validity to my amazement and I’m getting to it: the lovely lady to our left is Katherine Severino. She’s 21, studies Interior Design and works for a real estate firm. She does occasional DJ work over at 40 Principales which is a Latin American chain of radio stations, one of which is in Panama. Her co-workers would bother her because she looked like a preppy, SoCal, Legally Blonde type of girl and as a response she wrote the lyrics to the song as a joke. Everyone thought it was funny as hell on the radio station; so much that they decided to put a track behind it and recorded it… then it hit the radio as a joke, just for shits and giggles. Y’see now, in Panama, whenever you do that, EVERYONE will like it because whether we like to admit it or not, our reggae is moronic, but it’s funny. And catchy… the rest, apparently, is history. Here, have at this:

Yasuri no es Yasuri. La chica que canta el popular tema Gillete es muy distinta a la morena del video. Realmente se llama Catherine Severino, está en Caracas y goza de una belleza que recuerda a la Miss Universo 2005, Natalie Glevoba: ojos claros, suave piel blanca y largo cabello oscuro.

Es modelo, locutora, estudia Diseño de Interiores y trabaja en bienes y raíces en su natal Panamá. Pero ha tenido que hacer a un lado sus ocupaciones regulares por este éxito que, dice, fue inesperado. Un éxito que comparte con La Banda del Puente Rojo, los cinco compañeros de trabajo que participaron en la creación de Yasuri.

“Todo empezó como un relajo”, confiesa Catherine. “Los muchachos me molestaban mucho porque decían que yo era yeyecita (sifrinita). Entonces les escribí las estrofas de Yasuri Yamileth inspirada en las racatacas (malandras), y canté a capella, no para grabar nada”.

Sin ella saberlo, sus compañeros se encargaron entonces de agregar la música y arreglar el sonido. Luego Catherine recibió el balde de agua fría. Pusieron el tema en su programa de radio y alcanzó el primer lugar como Canción más Sonada en Panamá, para más adelante cruzar las fronteras y llegar a países como Costa Rica, Colombia, Argentina y Venezuela.

El video

“No quise aparecer en el video porque era mejor que la gente pensara lo que quisiera”. Así explica Catherine Severino el por qué buscar otro cuerpo y otro rostro para la Yasuri del archiconocido audiovisual.

En vista de su negativa, un productor en Panamá se hizo cargo: decidió grabar la pieza en el mismo barrio El Chorrillo y buscó a una fémina de la zona que luego desapareció por completo.

Pero Catherine no se preocupa y no teme por la reacción de la gente. “En Panamá cuando se supo que yo era Yasuri la gente se alegró. En la calle me gritaban Yasuri”. Y ella espera que en Venezuela sea igual. Hoy lo sabrá.

The blog post is dated August 15th, 2006. It’s not the first time this sort of deal has happened in Panama; I remember when I was in school and, if you’re in the know, Los Fabulositos would come on the radio all the fucking time and they were hatched the same way! Some people with a lot of time on their hands got together and did a track rapping about stupid shit and put it on the radio for shits and giggles but little did they know that they (the Fabulositos) would become staples of reggae and fondly remembered by idiots like me. This story is the same thing but with an added element which makes me runa tear down my eye like a father who realizes his son has outgrown him… the Internet. If it weren’t for the Internet, Yasuri Yamileth would’ve hit the dust and gone away just like every other silly reggae song out in Panama. This one’s different… and it’s much more different for me, and I’ll tell you why.

You see, ladies and gentlemen…. I know this woman. I’ve gotten hammered with her. I’ve gone to pool parties and to the beach with her. Hell, excuse me for saying so but I wanted to get in her pants for a while. I still do, but she’s passed on from simple GILF to a really sweet, nice girl who just happens to be very good-looking so it’s a little more complicated now. The more I dug into this Yasuri girl’s history, the more pictures of Kathy would pop up and I couldn’t believe my eyes… not because it was her who made up the song and shit but because of how much in close proximity I’ve been with her… hell, I have her on my MSN list and talk to her every once in a while when I’m not busy and feel like talking! I met her through a friend of mine who’s part of her circle of friends and we’ve hung out a bunch of times, even though I haven’t seen that crowd for a while but seriously, as I researched for you folks and found out more things about her trying to discredit the at-the-time incredible likeness of my friend Kathy to the Yasuri Kathy I found the post which said what she did for a living and what she was studying so that, coupled with even more pics that turned up, allow me to say that it’s the same Kathy I know, without a doubt.

This stuff is getting high up there in the shock value scare, somewhere between “The Sixth Sense” and “The Crying Game.” I imagine she wanted to keep this under wraps though (even if this article kind of defeats that, so I’m sorry in advance) since, even though many Latin Americans can’t get enough of the song and have been relieved that Yasuri’s actually hot, even comparing her to the 2005 Miss Universe apparently, Panamanians have in turn tried to label her off as a whore and a bitch in various national message boards. I’ve noticed that a lot of Panamanians can be very envious when given the proper trigger and I can see why they’d be so upset: cute “yeyé”-looking girl writes a stupid song that gets heard all over the continent by accident while they are stuck on a 9-to-5 job as a paper pusher on a company they don’t like to go home to a wife and kid and bills they don’t like much, either. I’m not even gonna link to that trash.

There you have it. If you dig in a little deeper into Panamanian reggae you’ll find that this is a common ocurrence since we sure as hell love our vapid music. Anyway, Kathy’s great and I wish I could see more of her but with her tours and Gillette stomping I don’t know if that’s possible. I’ll send her a message to her MSN one of these days, though… this whole fiasco just reminded me how nice it is to talk to her. Press conference pics are here, for your enjoyment. Below, the lyrics to the song “Gillette” by Yasuri Yamileth:

Mi nombre es Yasuri, Yasuri Yamileth

Mi nombre es Yasuri, Yasuri Yamileth

Mi nombre es Yasuri, Yasuri Yamileth

Yasuri Yamileth, Yasuri Yamileth

Mi nombre es Yasuri, Yasuri Yamileth

te metes conmigo te saco la gillete

Te dejo una ye, que no es de yeyé

sino de Yasuri, Yasuri Yamileth

Ella es Yasuri, Yasuri Yamileth

te metes con ella te saca la gillete

ella si es yeyé, le gusta el frappe,

ir a discoteca en su Mercedes Benz

Mi nombre es Yasuri, Yasuri Yamileth

Te gusta el cuara cuara pa’ bajarlo con te

Mi nombre es Yasuri, Yasuri Yamileth

Te gusta el cuara cuara pa’ bajarlo con te

Yasuri Yamileth, Yasuri Yamileth

Mi nombre es Yasuri, Yasuri Yamileth

te metes conmigo te saco la gillete

Te dejo una ye, que no es de yeyé

sino de Yasuri, Yasuri Yamileth

Vivo en El Chorrillo con mis ocho chiquillos

comiendo chorizo y parqueo en Veranillo

Yami,yami,yami Yamileth

te gusta la salsa tambien el reggae

Yami yami,yami Yamileth

el típico, la soca y bachatas tambien

Yami yami yami yami yami Yamileth

Yami yami yami yami yami Yamileth

Mi nombre es Yasuri, Yasuri Yamileth

te metes conmigo te saco la gillete

Te dejo una ye, que no es de yeyé

sino de Yasuri, Yasuri Yamileth

NOTE: I apologize for the font crazyness. Mighty WordPress didn’t want to cooperate today but I made it work, somehow. If you fucking complain though, I’m pulling out my Gillette. And I have a thick beard, man… I use a Mach 3, bitches!!!

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